The Best Revenge is Revenge
by JMK758
Summary: While the DC Agents struggle to solve the Fear Formula attack, kidnapped Scientists are forced by a despot to reconstruct the Ultimate Weapon while, in LA the Agents of the Office of Special Projects fight to prevent Nell Jones from going to Prison for murder. She has the greatest of motives to kill the victim, but did she do it?
1. Accusation

This is my 38th NCIS Mystery, the Eighth story of my Fourth Season. It follows 'The Phobos Affair' by three days. In the end of that story, on Monday, August 6, Director Jennifer Shepherd had sent Gibbs and his Team home following an overextended week, then had a clandestine conversation with Tony DiNozzo at which she presented to him an assignment that, if accepted, would run many times longer than the months spent on his UC Rene Benoit mission.  
It is now Thursday, August 9 and the team is - hopefully - well rested, because there's a lot of work to do.  
NCIS and its various successors are owned by Belisarius Productions. Specific LA Credit to Shane Brennan. The usual legal Disclaimers about characters and money apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents. You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
I love the way Barrett Foa and Renee Felice Smith give long, paired interviews where they answer fen questions, because I glean so much from them, like their favorite foods, their pet names for each other, the kind of scenes they'd love to play and so forth. I pulled several things from each interview I could access to enliven this story.  
I received some nice inspirations from a work called 'Tales from the Mission' by fellow FanFicker (is that a word?) Serotonin2501. Thank you. You'll want to look up his (to date) 67 contributions. Don't let the number of chapters daunt you, they're short and pretty sweet.  
I also thank Gina Mae Callen, Administrator for several Facebook NCIS groups such as NCIS:LA, NCIS&NCIS:NOLA Fan-fiction Writers, who provided incalculable help and without whom this story would not be what it is.  
An interesting aspect of Henrietta Lange is that she is above such trivialities as PC, and therefore you will hear no 'Ms.' from her.  
This Mystery follows events depicted in 'The Supervillain Affair', which occurred some 10 weeks ago during the Memorial Day Weekend, and deals with the consequences of that case. My stand-alone stories 'Princess Nell' and 'To Serve All My Days' occurred in the intervening time between that Mystery and this one.  
Rated T or NCis-17  
Please Review.

The Best Revenge is Revenge  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Accusation

Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron, with their families captives of the mysterious Jackson McGillicuddy, were removed early Tuesday morning from the steel cell they'd shared with families and beloved by the silent, black masked, fatigue uniformed soldiers who had held them prisoner for upwards of three days. Yesterday one of the soldiers had shot thirteen year old Chloe Bachman as a lesson when McGillicuddy had told them he doesn't threaten. The lesson had gained the prisoners' enmity far more than their terrified compliance.

The wound in the girl's side had been more bloody than life threatening, having entered an inch into and exited from her left side above her belt, but it proved their captor has neither mercy nor regard for life except as that life exists to serve his purposes.

The soldiers had returned minutes later with a basic First Aid kit for the girl, their only concession to humanity, and it had been barely adequate to halt the bleeding sopped up by abandoned clothing, disinfect the surrounding flesh and cover the wounds. Pleas for real medical help were ignored. No answer was given by the masked men before they'd taken their AK-47s and departed, nor had additional clothing been provided.

Now the three have been taken, hooded and gagged as they'd arrived, from the thirty by thirty foot steel chamber, leaving behind George, fourteen year old Ben and thirteen year old Chloe Bachman, Jodi and nine year old Jose Esposito and Rita Fisher, Cintron's girlfriend who has come to deeply regret their date.

Blinded by black hoods and silenced by ball gags, they've been forced to climb into a truck, the rear of which was lowered on squeaking treads to bang shut and seal them in.

The drive was long, but the many turns confused distance. Sound from outside the truck was distorted and frequently absent, street noise indistinct so that none could say any particular area was familiar. When, a half hour later, the truck stopped it could have been more than thirty miles distant.

x

They were grabbed and pulled to their feet before the metal door rumbled upward and other hands pulled them out, the exchange as silent as their kidnappings and hopeless as the captivity in the steel chamber, as frightening as the shooting of Chloe Bachman. They were pulled forward, their black hoods only brightening slightly as they were roughly guided to and through a doorway.

They were pulled up short, the metal door behind them slams shut with a crash that echoed though a huge space and, as roughly as they'd been treated thus far, their black hoods were yanked from their heads, the ball gags yanked loose from behind their heads and ripped from their mouths. If teeth were lost in the vicious pull, they're certain none of their captors would care.

In fact, sadistic pleasure was the only emotion they're sure would be felt by the soldiers.

The space before them was tremendous, two hundred feet wide, three hundred long and, by the windows in the distant walls, suitable for a three story aircraft hanger with windows in the second and third floors only. In the center, reflecting the beams of twenty overhead spotlights, stood a twelve foot tall device neither Bachman, Esposito nor Cintron had ever wanted to see.

The silver metal a hundred fifty feet away glittered in the spotlights but the scientists knew this was not the device they'd worked for over three years to design, develop and build. Six foot tall in its body yet extended cannon-like to a height of twelve feet at the muzzle, it was a duplicate of a device that should never have existed, though the original remains safely guarded by two thousand legitimate soldiers in a place as secret as Area 51 is famous.

The sixty thousand square foot floor was crowded with stations and equipment of seeming infinite variety but this highlighted device dominated everything.

x

Before them, much closer but pale in magnificence compared to the distant device, was the white haired man who thus far was the only one to speak to them in their three day captivity, the one who had had a young girl shot as a demonstration of ruthless power. "Welcome," Jackson McGillicuddy said and his voice had reverberated in the steel hanger, "I trust you slept well."

To this outrageous greeting there could have been only one answer and Catherine Bachman, the memory of her shrieking daughter bleeding on a steel floor sharp in her, did so in four long breaths. That the man before them is a sadistic monster none of them doubted, that he is ruthless he had already proven.

"As I told you last evening," McGillicuddy said, unfazed by the vitriol, "the device before you, a copy of what you once created for the U.S. Government as 'Operation: Dragonfire', has been recreated from plans obtained at great cost of life and yet does not function."

The easy dismissal he gave to that 'great cost of life' further showed, if any embellishment had been necessary, the character of their captor and the madness of his scheme.

"You will have access to twenty nine technicians and adequate resources. Your assignment is obvious, and the price of delay or failure I need not elaborate upon."

Each passing day has been woefully similar. In an unknown hanger untold miles from their loved ones, they toiled upon a monstrosity that should never have been built. The original could destroy whole cities in seconds, now a monster wanted a second one.

That was Monday, August 6.

ooo

"You're never going to get it," Supervisory Special Agent G. Callen insists three days later as he walks beside his larger counterpart Sam Hanna down the corridor to their desks. The left two facing ones are occupied by SA Kensi Blye and LAPD Detective Martin Deeks, already deep into their duties but not so deeply that they cannot be pulled out by the next episode of the 'G and S Banter Hour'.

'If it's Thursday,' Kensi thinks from beside Callen's desk, 'this must be Belgium, and I wish I were there.'

Actually she's in the city's old Water Administration Building, though the Spanish Mission style headquarters looks much better now than it probably had as a City Administration building in the old days. Still, she thinks, perhaps it would have been better in one sense: no dueling partners. Maybe.

There's an ancient and utterly disregarded 'Condemned' sign beside the main door; 'Warning: Imminent Hazard' it says. The property is not condemned, of course; NCIS posted that weather worn sign years ago to keep the curious kids away from their Secret HQ, but she thinks that perhaps some day the city is finally going to notice it, come down and clear the place out - and not with Deeks' smelly fruits - and thereby put her out of her misery.

"I get it," Sam assures his partner as he steps around the desks to his own, his back to the wall so he can command a view of the tremendous room. "You have a need for privacy. I do get that." He reaches for his desk calendar, rips off the August 8th sheet, crumples and throws it away.

"That's not what we're talking about," Callen says,

"It's what I'm talking about," Sam insists, sitting back and getting comfortable. Kensi hates to see him do this; it usually means he's willing to extend the debate, which can be made to last for hours - or so they seem to. "I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm saying you should get out more often, meet people."

"I meet plenty of people at work." Since he's kept under wraps the progress he and Joelle Taylor have made in the past half year since the malware case this past winter, few have any idea how well he's hidden his romantic life, which leads Sam to point out that

"They're not the kind you could bring home to mother."

"Hetty's my mother."

This makes Sam pause before he decides "That's just scary."

"You have to admit she could handle anyone I brought home."

"But how many that you'd bring home could handle her?"

Callen glances to her. "Kensi could."

'Oh please. Don't drag me into this.'

x

But she's rescued by the unexpected, the unannounced intrusion of two men in suits into their secure enclave, two men who stride up the corridor, pass the four Operatives and arc left to the elevated section that constitutes the center of Operations Manager Henrietta Lange's domain.

The four stare at the newcomers, irritation at being bypassed without even a glance dropping down to interest. That the two men wear suits where outside attire, with the temperature already 80, is generally tee shirts and shorts makes them stand out like dry thumbs on a mermaid.

The two speak to the small woman who runs the Office of Special Projects, yet none of their words cross the distance. Though this is by no means unusual, Lange preferring her privacy even in the midst, it's still unpleasant to four people for whom obtaining information on what's out of the ordinary is as essential as breathing.

"I wonder why they're here," Deeks muses with notable inflection.

"Know them?" G. Callen asks.

"Detectives Clause and Frisone. Haven't seen them in months."

One of the men hands Lange a folded paper, which she opens and peruses. From her expression, the paper doesn't bring good news.

Lip readers all, the four Operatives are at a disadvantage. Clause and Frisone sit with their backs to them while Lange, if she doesn't want to be read, is not.

Deeks is out of his chair and across the room before any of his partners can object. As Detective Liaison between the LAPD and NCIS, he can normally be read into whatever his counterparts are here for, but there's still enough uncertainty that he's cautious to approach directly along the sight line of his boss. When she doesn't wave him away, he comes up onto the elevated platform and steps to the side of Lange's desk. "Hey, guys," he greets the two Detectives, "haven't seen you in a while. What's up?"

x

"He's a big help," Sam Hanna says thirty seconds later. The man, a perennially unkempt and painfully loquacious contradiction to the Police Department's Undercover life, is in position to communicate valuable information but with the exception of an 'are you sure?' he hasn't said anything worthwhile.

For a man who frequently gives the impression that he's paid by the word, this is doubly disturbing.

Hetty Lange, seated facing them full on, is unreadable despite how much she says, to the point where Hanna and Blye stop trying. All they can see is that the woman is grim, therefore the news is bad, but that they'd known before and she's playing all cards very close to the vest.

'No,' Callen thinks as he continues the surveillance. 'She's sewn them into her vest and lined it with Kevlar.'

When she picks up one of the white phones before her, her conversation is blocked by the receiver.

The conference lasts for over four minutes, and when she puts the receiver down her aspect is even more grim.

She rises, the two men do as well, and she leads the three down the steps out of her open enclave, Deeks trailing. He looks even more unhappy than the boss.

As they approach, the three agents rise but Lange holds up a hand, and turns it to a downward pointing finger. More mystified than before, they sit back down as Lange leads the three men up the stairs to the second floor.

Deeks, as he passes, keeps his eyes forward, his expression stony.

x

Operations, a tremendous bastion of computer hardware and the most sophisticated software in the free world, is the domain of Eric Beale and Nell Jones. Nicknamed by some unremembered wag as 'the Wonder Twins', they're literally the long and short of Tech Operations and Intelligence Analysis.

Eric is tall and string-bean thin to the point of near emaciation, perpetually pushing the attire envelope, but with a sharp mind that can grasp computational intricacies that bog down lesser life forms. His hair is blond, very short and wavy and his black framed glasses seem designed for Clark Kent and generally accomplish the same purpose.

Whoever coined the phrase 'devastatingly intelligent' had been thinking of Nell. She's petite, coming up only to her partner's chest, with short red hair that frames a heart face and honey brown eyes that seek the greatest mysteries. She'd shortened her auburn locks in May down to a pixie cut and dyed it a far more vibrant red for the Undercover identity of Betty Willoughby, then kept the color for the past two plus months because Eric likes it.

While Eric wears a button down tye-dye shirt over khaki shorts several years too old and several inches too short for his lanky frame, Nell is clad in an olive blouse over pine green skirt. They're seated facing their workstations, their backs to the door, Nell on the left, deep in the examination of some obscure cyberspace mystery.

x

"Miss Jones?" Hetty calls, by that announcing their presence. The pair turn, mildly surprised to see two unknown, suit-encased men standing be the sliding door with their fellows.

"Yes, Hetty?"

"Would you come here please?"

The young woman leaves her station and partner behind and crosses the room past the huge display monitor that takes up most of the side wall. As she approaches, Deeks steps past her into the room, leaving her attention on her boss and the two visitors.

She stands a head taller than the boss, making them both seem valleys to the visiting hills. This, however, has never had a discernible effect upon either woman. Hetty exists in a field of self-confidence which Nell frequently strives to emulate.

But the grim manners of the four, most particularly Hetty's whom she has known to greet cataclysms that could stop entire cities with a resigned sigh, sets her nerves on edge. "Yes?" she asks, allowing caution and suspicion to step with heavy tread upon her tone.

"These are LAPD Detectives James Clause," she presents the taller man, then the other, somewhat shorter and some twenty pounds heavier yet taller than either of them, "and Barry Frisone."

"Nell Jones," Clause says, "you are under Arrest on suspicion of Murder."

x

" _WHAT_?"

Clause pulls a small notebook from his jacket pocket and reads aloud the writing on the back of it. "You have the Right to –"

" _HEY_!" Eric is out of his chair which crashes with the loud bang and he's across the room in a rush but Marty Deeks, hands up, stands before him. He doesn't restrain him, he's just in the way.

"Mr. Beale, stand down," is Hetty's command as Nell looks him to silence.

She doesn't want him to defend her, even as he'd once stood up to Assistant Deputy Director Granger of her behalf.

This time she's sure he won't get bogged down by rectitude.

x

"You have the Right to remain silent," the taller suit resumes reading. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a Court of Law. You have the Right to an Attorney. If you cannot afford an Attorney, one will be provided for you." He puts the pad back into his pocket. "Do you understand the Rights I have read to you?"

"Yes," she admits, barely understanding anything. What just happened? Has she really been Arrested?

"Do you wish to waive the Right to remain silent?"

"She does not," Hetty declares before Nell can open her lips.

A look between them is all that is needed. Nell really wants to say a lot, but she'll obey her Mentor's order – for now.

"Miss Jones... Nell," Hetty says, "I have already contacted Council, which will be dispatched to assist you as soon as possible."

Nell looks to Eric. Her friend is blocked by Marty Deeks and such is their respect for the command of Henrietta Lange that neither will defy her, even now when each wants so fervently to do so.

x

"Miss Jones," pulls her attention forward to the tall man.

"Special Agent Jones," is Hetty's firm correction.

"Special Agent Jones," the man says as he pulls from his jacket a folded paper and hands it to her. "This is a Warrant for your Arrest in connection with the Murder of Grekor Kanyicska."

The floor opens beneath her feet and she falls into the hole, but when she opens the paper that is the name and charge she sees. Kanyicska, after the death of Rene Benoit, the infamous La Grenouille, is - rather was - the most powerful American Arms Dealer and someone she has had too much cause to know too well.

He'd been reported dead on Sunday, four days ago.

Clause hands her another paper which she also opens, hardly needing the words: "This is a Search Warrant for your apartment, which Officers are at this moment executing. Anything found within the terms of the Warrant will be used in aid of your Prosecution."

Already dropped on the first floor with broken legs and shattered spine, another hole opens under her and she crashes to the bedrock.

Cold she hadn't noticed in the long drops that destroyed her body and left her crumpled in the rubble freezes her deep within. The ice spreads throughout her body as she thinks about how much there is in her laptop for them to find.

x

The clicks of handcuffs being withdrawn from Frisone's pocket is more than Eric can stand. " _You can Not take her out of here like a common Criminal_!"

"Mister Beale."

Eric wants to push past Deeks, to tear into the pair, to defend his partner, but those two words from Hetty Lange hold him in place. In his seething brain a minuscule voice, one that he'd ignore if he could, whispers that anything he would do he could not win at and it will make Nell's situation worse.

"Guys," Marty steps in, his own handcuffs clicking out and he steps before Nell and takes her right arm, "you'll find there's little 'common' about Nell."

Handcuff Regulations specify that cuffs are to be attached with the arms behind the back, backs of hands together, the bands ratcheted firmly in place between the carpal bones and the radius and ulna to allow each hand only a few degrees of motion. Marty secures her hands in front, three inches above the wrists and one notch short of a firm fit. In fact, with her hands downward before her, the cuffs slide down to their wonted positions at her hands.

Marty looks to Frisone and Clause but sees in their eyes that there'll be no challenge. They are arresting a Federal Law Enforcement Special Agent, and if she does nothing to make them regret the courtesy thus far shown, she may keep it.

xx

Callen, Hanna and Blye, prevented from eavesdropping on an unknown issue, have been reduced to speculating while they await appropriate briefing, so it's with no special concern that they see Marty Deeks precede Hetty and Nell down the steps, followed immediately by the two visiting Detectives while Eric stands at the top of the stairs. Mild concern shoots up a notch at the distress etched on his face but rockets into the stratosphere and explodes as Marty rounds the turn and they see Nell's wrists shackled in silver handcuffs.

"What the hell?" "What's going on?" "What are you doing?" is a barely intelligible jumble as the outraged Agents move to intercept, but they too are halted by a restraining hand raised by their Operations Manager. They can do nothing as the three men escort the red headed young woman down the corridor toward the door.

Hetty stands before her agents, having no doubt that she holds their absolute attention, as much as that of the staring man at the top of the stairs.

"We have known for several days that Grekor Kanyicska had been killed on Sunday the fifth and his organization is in some degree of chaos as they reorganize, and that their fellow Arms Dealers are alert for any sign of weakness. What I - what we - did not foresee is that Miss Jones has been arrested for his murder. Mister Callen, I want you to pull everything on his operation, something that you have already started to do but now you have a motivation toward greater speed and thoroughness. Mister Hanna, everything on his personnel, focusing on those who have emerged as the most likely to pick up the ball in the shifting hierarchy."

"That's his lieutenant, Richard Burgoyne," Sam says. "He moved into the center seat practically before the body cooled. He might still be in it today."

"Indeed. It is possible he will even be there tomorrow. However, such seats often go through as many changes in occupant as those in the Italian government. Miss Blye, you have his customers and competitors, and you will each make all use of Mr. Beale's talents and resources. And now, if you will excuse me, I have numerous telephone calls to make."


	2. Testimony and Evidence

Chapter Two  
Testimony and Evidence

Jennifer Shepherd, Director of the world reaching Naval Criminal Investigative Service, sets the file folder down on the desktop, reaches up for the ceiling and stretches every muscle from fingers to toes. The report is on NCIS' First Annual Award Dinner Dance, including the 'Agent of the Year' honors. Such things were, up to last year, afternoon occasions for Agents in the Training Room but this year's has grown into a Black Tie affair in the Officers' Club with spouses, dinner and band, a full - perhaps overfull - evening. Cynthia Sumner had maintained a gentle but steady pressure since last August until she'd bowed to the appeal of general Morale by making what has over the years become a sparsely attended, low key occasion into a full blown gala.

She'd had her reservations, but as of today the RSVPs have passed 109 Agents and nearly as many guests for next Wednesday evening's blowout, so in one sense it's an improvement over the bare bones gatherings of the past.

She longs for the good old days.

She'd settled things with the woman in the outer office by appointing her, quite reasonably she thinks, Chairperson of the Committee that does the actual work, but she still has to sign off, per Military Wisdom, on every little thing.

Now all she needs is to chisel an hour out of some day in the next eight to find a dress. Maybe the sequined black one with the spaghetti straps that she'd worn to her first Marine Corps Birthday Ball as Director after David and DiNozzo's 'Undercover Assassins' Op, the Ball Ducky had escorted her to way back when, will be suitable – if she can avoid sneezing.

x

She reaches for her pen, signs her name in her flowing script once again and sets the folder on the 'Out' stack to go back to her Chairwoman, together with a note to _please_ assume more autonomy. Cynthia is already quite good at duplicating her signature on routine documents. Time for more practice.

She stretches again, wondering, if she strains hard enough, if she can reach Jethro's height without the enhancement of heels. It's 11:30, closing on lunch time but she thinks that period would be better served on the track a few blocks away within the sprawling Navy Yard. She's been noticing lately that too many hours in this chair attending to calls and paperwork are taking their toll and it's long past time to put a stop to that.

The phone at her left grabs her attention and gives its opinion of her plans. The line that blinks on the unit isn't one that goes through Cynthia's desk outside; this one is a direct line and only sounds when the fifteen seconds to be spent in her Secretary's fielding the call is far too long.

Her hand flashes out and the receiver is at her ear possibly more quickly than an eye could resolve. "Shepherd." She has already abandoned the thought of lunch or turns around the track. "Yes, Hetty," she says, betraying none of the surprise she feels.

As she listens to the Operations Manager of California's Office of Special Project's concise report, any inclination toward distraction vanishes.

xx

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge of Headquarters Division, knows from an internal clock he pays little attention to that it's nearly noon and his team will, one by one, make their way up to the Café. Food from outside the Navy Yard is always better but he's had to put a stop to the long breaks such meals entail because of the lack of progress on the Fear Formula case. With the suicides of Debra Zapigna and Gene Schecter, the last interviewable leads are gone and research is a slow alternative.

 _DAMN_ DePardu. The Admiral has hindered progress for days with his refusal to have NCIS Read into 'Project: Life Source', All they have is a useless, probably misleading code name, some papers containing tables of numbers of obscure purpose and a victim no longer in a straight jacket but still out of their reach to interview.

Okay, they can interview him, but beyond 'do you have any enemies' they can ask nothing substantive. Captain Thomas Benes had been in charge of Life Source at the Naval Research Lab, and as long as they're blocked from learning more than the name of the damned thing, that line of Investigation is halted.

And Palmer and Sky are both still laid up. Okay, Palmer's home from Monroe Hospital since last evening but Sky is still bedridden, in a room now instead of comatose in the Psych equivalent of Intensive Care. She'd gotten a massive jolt of the drug and is lucky to be alive.

But in the past three days the team's progress has been minimal. They'd lost Tuesday and Wednesday due to Shepherd's sending them home after only an 85 hour week, while other teams picked up the ball and Thursday is going nowhere.

x

But then he looks up and to his right to Shepherd, who cuts across the elevated MTAC platform that is all that constitutes, in this area, the fourth floor. The high ceiling here is given over to a skylight and the noonday sun that shines through it illuminates the redheaded woman who halts at the rail, looks down at his team.

Abby Sciuto, the most brilliant and hinkiest person he has ever met, has always maintained the supremacy of the psychic faculty - her words and definitely not his - and though he doesn't have any more faith in her belief than he has in Michelle Palmer's Witchcraft, he knew from the instant of seeing the woman cross above him that her destination is MTAC, that her slight divergence to the rail will precede a signal to him that he and his team are to join her, and that he's not going to like what he's about to learn. He doesn't believe that Leonard DePardu, Chief of Naval Operations, has changed his mind or has gotten one, so her presence up there, as Abby would say, bodes ill.

Rising, he says nothing as he waves his team to join him, hence the first words spoken are given in the secure chamber and the screen is alighted to show the familiar Operations Center of the Office of Special Projects in Los Angeles. Agents Lange, Callen, Hanna, Blye and Beale are on the screen when Shepherd announces to him and his team that "The LAPD has made an arrest in the murder of Grekor Kanyicska."

"That was fast," DiNozzo says. The Arms Dealer had been reported killed on Sunday, not quite a full four days ago. "I figured anyone who could put a hit on that bastard would be hard to find."

"It seems not."

"Who took him out?"

It's the LA Operations Manager who replies that "According to them, it was our own Special Agent Nell Jones."

x

The blockbuster announcement has its full effect upon the five Agents, but Gibbs has heard more devastating shockers in his time. "They have a case?"

"We don't know enough yet," Lange replies. "She was arrested only a few minutes ago."

"Can't say I'm surprised they'd suspect her," Tony says. "She has one hell of a motive."

Gibbs turns on him, ignoring the outrage expressed on the faces of those who know the woman best. "Well, yeah, DiNozzo, the last time they were together we pulled her off stomping the hell out of him."

"If memory serves, none of us moved very fast."

"You finally pulled her off," Shepherd says to Gibbs.

"She was barefoot stomping on Darth Vader in his armored suit. I didn't want her to hurt her feet."

x

The torrent of humiliations the young woman had suffered at the hands of the Arms Dealer and his posse does, he feels, justify striking back, though he has trouble picturing the woman walking up and putting a bullet between Kanyicska's eyes.

"What evidence do the Police have?" McGee asks, preferring not to dwell on the woman's humiliations that had led to such fiery revenge at the Hotel Meritz. He's often felt kinship with Jones. As he'd told his wife at the Memorial Day Weekend 'Greater East Coast Comic Arts Convention' in May, 'she's Tech, basically a female me', and while he'd had something of a bird's eye view of the denouement, he would have been content had her revenge lasted for several minutes.

She'd been abused from Friday through Sunday, forced to walk among thousands of fen 95% naked and probably to do quite a bit more until the plan had fallen apart. The Convention had lasted through Monday but on Sunday Nell, he and Shav had moved into one of the large suites vacated by some of the guests who'd fled the Maritz once the Quarantine had been lifted. It had allowed Jones the privacy of her own room and safe, friendly companionship as well.

"Our LAPD Liaison, Detective Martin Deeks, has accompanied the arresting officers to determine that while she is being processed."

"What did she report at the time?" Gibbs asks.

"Special Agent Jones' report on the Operation, from the point at which she was assigned until its completion in DC, was concise, detailed and accurate enough for publication in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It covered everything she learned about his operation and his intent to broker a deal between two factions who used the Hotel Maritz as the venue for their negotiations."

x

Gibbs turns to "McGee, the Report you turned in from that Comic Convention, flesh it out so it could win a Pulitzer."

"Yes, sir."

The rest of the team, along with himself, had reported on all that had happened since their arrival on that Sunday, but McGee had spent all four days at the Maritz.

"There's one problem, however," McGee says. No one wants to hear it, but "I spent the Convention avoiding her." He glances at Shepherd to bring her into this. "Remember, the Director put out a DNE."

They do indeed. A 'Do Not Engage' order on an Undercover Operative means that Agents on site not only have no conversations with, but they do not see, hear or acknowledge a fellow Agent even if standing right next to her.

For three days while in public, they had to avoid one another except for special circumstances when she initiated supposedly safe contact until the case broke. The only time they could be together was after the case ended on Sunday. After that, through Monday, Shav, Nell and he were virtually inseparable.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it accomplishes so little.

"I do have one thing I can try," he assures them.

Gibbs gives him five seconds. "Are you going to make me _guess,_ McGee?"

"Shav spoke to her for quite a long time, but it was a private con–"

"Ring her up."

"Yes, boss."

He'd been about to explain how a conversation Nell had initiated with someone who is not an agent doesn't fall under the provisions of the DNE but it's obvious no one wants to hear it.

xx

He has to ascend the ramp and step outside to make the call, hating to miss the rest of the briefing, but there's no help for it. He pulls his cell phone out as he opens the door and steps out onto the platform but can't help but think how that Convention at the Hotel Maritz, barely three months ago, continues to impact their lives.

He has one special souvenir from those days standing upon his desk. He'd talked Siobhan, with difficulty, into posing for the picture taken by a Fantasy Photographer who specializes in custom photos. Robert Hostler runs a traveling booth with the title 'Do You Want To Be A Superhero?' and had created a marvelous portrait of his lovely wife.

It's a space shot taken from one of Saturn's moons, the tremendous planet and its majestic rings in the upper right background, the vastness of space in the left. On the moon Shav, in her identity as the alien Green Lantern Katma Tui, with red face and black hair indicative of the Koruganan race, is fetchingly posed. Her body is surrounded by an emerald aura and the ring on her white gloved hand, resting upon a delightfully curved hip, shines brighter than any star.

He'd selected an 8x10 for his desk, where it graces the spot right next to the monitor, always in sight, but when he'd seen the completed work he'd upgraded to a full size portrait he'd hung, against her preferences, on a side wall of the living room.

He recalls Shav telling him on Saturday evening, after he'd come home from the first day of the 'Case of the Fear Poison', how when Bridget Morehouse, their six year old niece, had walked into the apartment, she'd seen the distinctive costume but then saw through the make-up. It had taken, Shav told him, twenty minutes to wind the excited girl down and explain how the image is a fake.

He's not entirely sure Bridget believes her.

x

/Hoigh, a chuisle!/ Shav's characteristic delight at the opportunity to talk to him comes through so clearly and he hopes he can keep it.

"Hi, honey."

/What's wrong?/

He heard in her brogue her shift from delight to apprehension. "What makes you think something's wrong?"

/Wifely psyche. It's not quite noon and you're calling./

He can appreciate this. He's had the past two days off, Tuesday while Shav was here on her usual day serving as Chaplain and confidant to his fellow agents, then yesterday while she was at Saint Mary the Virgin Church, and he'd spent those days with Bridget. He'd taken her out to see the city and quickly realized that wearing down the small Power Battery is more easily planned than accomplished.

Now their niece is downstairs at the Church Day Care, which is established for the benefit of working parents, where Shav had added the girl into the program, allowing her to perform her duties without (too many) interruptions.

x

"Okay." He knows he's given himself away, no help for that. He gives his wife a capsule summary of the situation ending with "She's accused of murdering Grekor Kanyicska."

Her reply is in Gaelic, and not at all High. He imagines the look her partner Father Donaldson is giving her from his desk. Donaldson doesn't speak Gaelic and likely doesn't realize how lucky he is.

"I know you two talked a lot that one evening." It had been more than a lot. Since the time Nell had come to their room, seeking his wife's aid, he'd watched two movies in the Con's film room and only after some late Preview reruns of soon-to-be-released projects from Marvel Studios had he been able to get back into their room. "Can I ask you a question?" He hadn't then, respecting the women's privacy, especially in light of the turmoil Nell had been suffering, but now too much has changed.

/You can ask./ He picks up in her brogue that she's being cautious, and /I'm not sure if I'll answer./

"First, did she Confess?"

A cautious pause. /You're asking me if our conversation fell under Sacramental Seal?/

"Yes."

/Not directly, no, but I'll have to think about it. We went over a lot. Ask your question./

"Did she tell you anything, give any indication back then that she would?"

A long longer silence.

Painfully long.

"Shav?"

/All I will say to you, and this is _All_ I will say, is that she was very distraught. And she wished he were dead./

"But did she say she would kill him?"

/Timmy, I said that was all I'll say. As to anything more... no, she did not Confess, I did not offer or grant Absolution – it would have been simpler if we had because I'd simply tell you to hang up, but I do have to think about this. She told me a great deal in confidence, and I have to decide where we stand./

"Can you tell me Anything?"

/Ask her what we spoke of. She'll tell you what she wants you to know./

He can hear the definite Period in her tone. He also knows that not only has she said all she will to him but he's gotten far more than she'd give to anyone else. He knows exactly what she would do if someone pressed. She can't be Subpoenaed, even if it were to come to that, for if she chose to she could invoke 'Sacramental Seal' and no Court in the country would expend the time or effort to break that which cannot be broken.

His wife can be very determined when she sets her mind to it, and she's one of the very few people in the world who has ever fought Leroy Jethro Gibbs to a standstill.

x

"Kiss Bridget for me."

 _/I will./_

 _"I love you." He kisses the phone, her ear being only a fraction of an inch from his lips._

 _/I love you too, a chuid den tsaol./ She kisses him goodbye._

 _He lets her be the one to hang up. 'Uh kwhij den teel' to American ears is literally 'my share of life', a particularly intense endearment, and definitely not one for his team to hear as the door opens behind him._

 _"You get those answers, McGee?" Gibbs asks and he's glad the man hadn't heard the kisses._

 _"Err, kind of, boss."_

 _Gibbs waves him inside as the others continue to their destinations and their already full case loads._

 _xxx_

Nell sits in Holding Five on the eighth floor where she had been deposited by Detectives Clause and Frisone, a white room with very few amenities. It has, in fact, a chair and a full coverage camera in the upper right corner. She recognized, from instant one, the psychological intent to soften her up for Interrogation, so she's determined to wait the men out.

She sits up in the straight backed wooden chair and concentrates on her breathing, on calm thoughts, on her favorite songs, anything other than the unanswered question 'Why do you think I did this?'

She knows that's not an answer she'll get until they come to bring her to their version of an Interrogation room, and that it's not going to be as nice as the side room of the Boat Shed.

She's not entirely alone, there's a big room outside the locked white door and all she needs to do is to knock to use the bathroom, but other than that her movements are very much restricted.

She wants to hold on to her confidence, but it's hard.

Hetty. She hadn't thrown those two men out on their ears, she'd allowed them to arrest her. But how could Hetty think...

True, she'd been thrilled, ecstatic at the glorious news that Kanyicska was dead, that he'd gotten what he deserved. That bastard was dead, hopefully to be buried in the unhallowed ground of a garbage dump; better yet, to first be sent through a tree mulcher. She'd accepted Eric's invitation to a celebratory dinner, and they'd toasted his hopefully agonizing demise.

Eric. He'd stuck with her throughout all of this. More, he'd helped her to see the better aspects of the nightmare she'd suffered, shown her how the method of her humiliation could be turned into a symbol of strength and empowerment through the medium of his unbridled love. She will never stop loving him for what he'd done for her, for boosting her up when Kanyicska and his posse had tried to tear her down, and thereby showing her the beauty of his vision of her.

But how could LAPD think she killed that bastard? Granted she'd dreamed of it, wanted it, longed for it with a passion that had scared her, but she didn't do it. She'd talked to Nate Getz so many times until it had embarrassed her, certain she was coming off as vicious and vengeful, which was more upsetting because it was true.

She'd wanted Kanyicska dead. She hadn't gotten anywhere near enough vengeance at the hotel before she'd been pulled off that bastard, but she'd gotten a tiny bit of satisfaction that he'd been arrested.

And then that idiot Judge had pulled that out from under her by setting only a million dollar – what kind of imbecile is he? – bail. Stupid, brainless jerk! Why didn't that half-assed Judge know you _never_ set less than a _forty million dollar cash bail_ for the likes of Kanyicska?

x

She takes a deep breath, tries to fight the blast of anger, but shoving it down is hard.

'I wish I _had_ killed him.'

But at least he's dead. She'd gotten her wish. She's had her revenge. But now they want to punish her for what she'd wanted to do but hadn't done.

How can they say she killed him?

Okay, she'd wanted to. She'd so passionately wanted to, but he was out of her reach, but now someone did get him – the Insecticide is accomplished – but they're saying she did it.

How? How could they think she did it? She doesn't know. But she does know that if they get her laptop, the one without the modem so no one can hack her, if they break her passwords they're going to read that Journal, the one Nate suggested she write to release some of her pain – _DAMN IT_ – they're going to know how much she wanted that f*cking Bastard DEAD.

xx

Marty Deeks, playing on his standing as a fellow Detective, sits at the side of the facing desks between the older and taller James Clause and the heavier Barry Frisone in the crowded Squad Room. That aspect of Station House work is something he never misses, the contrast between the airy spaciousness and sheer quiet of NCIS' headquarters versus a khaki green room built for twenty and occupied by forty, the air jangling with phones and perennially heavy with coffee and sweat, far too much of the latter in the 80 degree morning.

"Been a long time," he says, scanning the huge yet crowded room, and is sure there's more than Detective Bureau sharing the space. "Hi," he says to the men at a nearby desk. "You know," he says to Clause, "working with NCIS shows you a different side of life, there's the undercover work, the deceptions, the Con. Sometimes I think NCIS invented the Con. It should be the Ni-Con except I think that's taken." Clause and Frisone don't break their stares and he decides he's wasting his spiel.

"Okay guys, let's level. Neither of you buy that Nell Jones whacked the biggest, baddest Arms Dealer on the West Coast."

"Doesn't matter if we buy it," Friscone says.

"If I had my druthers, I'd ruther give her a medal," Clause declares, "but the facts are the facts."

"And what are the facts?"

"Last week, Wednesday, August 1, one of the big wigs of Kanyicska's organization calls 911 and calmly invites LAPD into their digs, a walled, four story, 18th Century Hacienda that could hold off an army, to tell the first unit on the scene that their boss was done in. We're called in, CSU, the whole enchilada. Kanyicska's laying flat on his back on his bed in his third floor suite, dead as Marley's door nail.

"Then they lay a flash drive on us. Seems someone remotely screwed with the Security system, whacked every camera in the complex but missed the one in the suite."

"Pretty convenient."

"Tell me about it," he says, indicating with his tone how loudly his BS alarm had rung at that revelation. "Anyway, they say they got a film of the killer. So while uniforms are questioning the staff, trying to narrow down who we should look into first, and everyone's searching the house and grounds, we watch the film. By the way, we found evidence on the grounds, but I'll get to that.

"We watched the video. It shows your friend Jones climbing in through a window, that's at 1:26 by the time stamp, dressed like a cat burglar, all in black and I mean _all_ in black and carrying a black bag. She goes into the bedroom, comes out seven minutes later, 1:33. She went out the same window she came in by."

"And you're sure it was Nell?"

"The minute I saw her at your place, I was sure. Have a look."

x

He takes from an envelope on his desk a gray thumb drive within a small plastic bag. "Mirror," is how he describes the unit he plugs into his computer. That's all that's necessary; this is a copy, the original being in Evidence lockup. He double clicks on the single file and, on the screen, the dark interior of a room appears. A time stamp on the lower right indicates August 1, 0126. The curtained windows on the right edge of the screen let in little light, the room's details are difficult to determine beyond gross shapes of furniture, but they can see activity at one of the windows. A shadow moves, the black on black image entering the room past the curtains, still barely distinguishable by what is probably moonlight through the large windows.

" _That_ ' _s_ Nell? Looks more like Lamont Cranst–" The room lights come up full and the intruder starts, long black hair flying as she – and Deeks grants it is certainly a 'she' in the figure hugging black clothes – snaps into a defensive crouch. The face, though for an instant she's looking in the direction below the elevated camera, is much too small to discern with any clarity on Clause's screen. The image itself is of quite high quality for a security camera, but Deeks is satisfied. "Sorry to disappoint you guys, but Nell's a redhead." It's also still dyed a much lighter than her normal red from that Memorial Day Op. 'And her hair's shorter,' he thinks but needn't say.

The slim woman wears a cylindrical pouch on her back, angled like a quiver for arrows.

Satisfied she's not going to be attacked, she relaxes, turns to the door at the end of the room and enters.

"Well, that was illuminating."

Clause uses the control to fast forward seven minutes until the door opens again. This time the woman comes out coughing, hand covering her mouth as she chokes. But after she recovers, for one moment while facing the camera, she drops her hand and Clause freezes the image. A few movements of the mouse draws a square about the head and upper body, this box enlarges and Deeks can't hold his smile any longer.

The black hair is long, past shoulder length, but the face... if that's not Nell it's her twin sister and Nell Jones is not so advantaged.

x

"That was last Wednesday morning, eight days ago. At 7:28 a.m. Kanyicska was missed for breakfast, his bodyguard went in and found him on his bed. The bed sheet told a story; it looked like she knelt on his arms while she suffocated him. On the grounds, at the base of a wall she scaled to make her escape, we found a long black wig she apparently didn't go back for, probably figured she'd get caught going back over again.

"In that wig were six dyed light red hairs, natural shade at the roots auburn. Forensics Lab tested them for DNA, then ran what they found through CODIS and then, when they found no one with a Record, they expanded into other databases.

"Last night the final confirmation came in: the DNA is from your friend Nell Jones."

Author's Note: For the background of what thoughts Nell had been contemplating while trapped in the Holding Room, see 'The Supervillain Affair' and my companion one-shots 'Princess Nell' and 'To Serve All My Days'.


	3. Am I Coming Apart?

Chapter Three  
Am I Coming Apart?

"None of this makes sense," Kensi protests in the bullpen. How can LAPD think Nell Jones could have anything to do with Grekor Kanyicska's death? More than think, they _arrested_ her for it.

"Nell's not a murderer," Eric declares with greater heat.

"Agreed," Hetty says. "Under normal circumstances Miss Jones would not have done any such thing."

"Under any circumstances!"

"Calm yourself, Mr. Beale. We must proceed logically. Our Legal division has already filed a Motion to Discover. They will have access to such evidence as the police have. An attorney will be with her before any questioning and will advise her to say nothing. Miss Blye, Mr. Deeks called, he is already on his way back with a preliminary report. I chose to have him come the rest of the way in rather than turning him about and your meeting him there. As soon as we know what information he has obtained, I want you both to return to the Station and obtain what copies of evidence can be immediately secured."

"This is tickling my Conspiracy bone," Kensi says, reminding Callen of the 'Case of the Burnt Out Servers and Delta Force Duster'. "Since when do Arms Dealers go to the LAPD for justice? Their usual method would be to take care of this themselves." She sees Eric move to jump on this, but Hetty gives him no time.

"That is an excellent point, Miss Blye, and one about which I admit to great concern. The reason why Kanyicska's people have chosen not to resolve this in their usual manner," she looks up to Callen, "is what I want you and Mr. Hanna to determine. When Mr. Deeks returns with what he was able to glean from his colleagues, have a sit down with the late Mr. Kanyicska's people."

"You got it."

xxx

1306 ET. Tim McGee pays for his lunch, leaves the Cashier station and scans the fourth floor south Employee Café for an empty table. After he eats he must go to the Maryland Women's Prison to interview, not Celia Roberts, but the Psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth McFadden about her involvement in the Hypno CDs that she and Samuel Richards had used to program military wives to murder their husbands and then kill themselves.

Thus far the investigation over the past few months has accomplished nothing in tracking the trail back to the ringleader, but now they face a too familiar scenario. The two who had taken out Captain Thomas Benes and had targeted Abby Sciuto, laying low Sammy Sky and Jimmy Palmer instead, had killed themselves rather than face capture and interrogation.

If he can discern any information from McFadden, they'll be a step closer to solving one, perhaps both cases.

He doesn't hold high hopes.

x

Looking for a vacant chair and convivial company, preferring lunch on Tuesdays when, on most weeks, he can eat with his wife, he finds Michelle seated more than midway across the room by the left wall. She's staring out the window at the Anacostia and even at this distance he knows she's not seeing it.

He can read Palmer, who was supposed to be back in the bullpen already, so well. The fact that they, as the only two married Agents, talk so frequently helps, but he could see her distress while she worked at her desk downstairs, could read it in her sustained tension.

She doesn't want to be here, but is afraid not to be. She not only feels that she has to prove herself capable of doing her job in her increasingly 'developing' condition if Gibbs is going to back her intent to work at least into her third Trimester, but she wants to be on top of the hunt for whoever assaulted Thomas Benes, Sammy Sky and most especially her husband. She wants to be on the forefront when the case breaks and to be in on the take-down.

She also wants to be home.

"May I join you?"

She looks up, and her smile is mostly pressed lips and pull. "Why, am I coming apart?"

"Probably," he says, setting the tray down and taking a seat. Her plates are empty but it doesn't look like she'd selected much. She looks to the river and her sigh is admission. Though she looks at him then and essays another smile, he thinks it's more politeness than pleasure. "How's Jimmy?"

She sighs and there's a lot of worry in this one. Double sigh, a bad sign indeed, but she's had a very bad morning. "He came back yesterday, now he's stuck home, who knows for how long, and it hasn't been - it's not an easy recovery. I had to come in, but he's out until the doctors say he can come in, but it's rough. Physically, mentally, he could come in now, but... He's become..."

"Needy?" He's picked up on that downstairs, mostly from what she avoided saying.

She nods sharply, biting her lower lip. "He wants me, needs me to be there. The first day after he came out of the drugs he was depressed, really depressed, it took a day to bring him out of it but I'd…. I've seen him sad thousands of times, but he was just so low, then the next morning he was better but now…. He can't stand to have me out of his sight. I could - should have stayed home but…."

x

"How's he dealing with the fear?" Like Captain Benes, who was also released yesterday, they've spent too much time in straight jacket and padded cell and each has been kept from returning to his respective job pending Official Clearances.

Sammy is awake since yesterday morning, brought out of her induced coma, She'd received a massive dose of the drug and it was feared she'd injure herself in insane panic, but she's still confined to a bed at Monroe until her system is verified as clear. Ducky had seen both Jimmy and Sammy each evening after work, as well as rendering his assistance with Benes, but–

"It's not as bad as when he was having the nightmares about shooting Franklin, but he's..." She keeps her fist pressed to her lips and he can see she's trying to keep a placid mask for the men and women surrounding them, but it doesn't invade her eyes.

"He was so broken. You didn't see him, you can't know."

"We visited him and Sammy; Tony, Ziva, Gibbs and I, every day."

"Oh, yeah. I..." She finger brushes tears from her eyes. "I forgot."

x

He doesn't say that she barely knew. They'd all spoken, collectively and individually, during those two enforced days off, but her mind was in the room with Jimmy, not out in the hall with them and right now he's sure it's in Georgetown.

"Since he came home yesterday it's better… almost… but still…."

"Have you slept?"

She shakes her head. "Last night I held him. We didn't make love. He tried. He couldn't," she tells the tabletop. "I held him, one arm a pillow, the other around him, my leg around him until he finally fell asleep. That was after one thirty." She forces herself to look up. "Then I lay there all night, worrying. I kept trying to fall asleep, telling myself he's home, he's going to be okay, but... This morning it was so hard to leave."

Tim says nothing. She really has to talk.

"He jumps at any sudden noise. They say the drug is out of his system, but it's not. Only the chemicals are. I could see it in his eyes, the way he hunches, the way he... He needs me."

"You could've stayed," he says as gently as he can.

"I spoke to Ducky, he said I should come in, that it's psychological now more than physical, but that Jimmy needs to find the strength within him, the strength he has, the strength he needs again... But I'm going to talk to Gibbs when we get back downstairs, take the rest of the day. We're not doing anything here looking for those BAS–"

x

She looks away, shamed by her outburst that had turned heads.

He gives her half a minute but she won't come back on her own. "That's why you came in. You want to find them."

She meets his eyes, and what he sees in hers makes him fight pulling back. "I want to Kill them, the ones who gave Schecter the drug. I can't kill him 'cause he's dead. But I want to tear them apart with my bare hands. I want to–" She shuts down, eyes closed, breath forcibly steadied and he waits. He watches her body slowly and gradually relax, watches the tension being forced out, and when she opens her eyes he can see what a mask she's put on.

"The Anger Management program says," she tells him in a voice more empty than placid, "we're supposed to recognize our anger, seek the cause of it, deal with it."

"...And?"

She shrugs, but it's slow, like she's fighting her own muscles to retain a control that's more mask than real. "I can't even tell you. I'm not sure. I stayed in that Ward the past three days and I was so scared. He was so scared, but..." She wipes more tears away and her whisper trembles. "Please, can we talk about something else, because otherwise I'm really gonna cry."

 _xxx_

1030 hrs PT. Though Nell Jones has enough personal confidence not to be fazed by residing in a world where the vast majority of people are taller than herself, she does recognize the effort expended by having two gigantic officers sandwich her on her journey from the Holding room on three to Interview Two on the fourth floor.

She would tell them, if she cared to, that their arrangement is wasted. Though exceptionally tall, neither man is as bulky as Sam Hanna – nor as attractive to her as Eric Beale – but when she's faced down enemies with assault rifles, Law Enforcement Officers who are sworn to protect don't terrify her.

What terrifies her, what she tries as hard as she can to mask, is that the Detectives might break into her laptop, might read her diary, might learn how tight the noose she's put around her neck is.

x

Inside the Interview room, another white on white icebox that has none of the ambiance of even the inner room of the Boat Shed at Marina Del Rey, she's reunited with Detective Clause, his white shirt blending into the white on white as his black trousers do into the black furniture. At least she's wearing green and olive. "Hi," she says, adopting her most pleasant and confident manner, masking everything so she can give him all the fear she would in meeting her friends for Sunday brunch. Taking a step in so the white door can be closed behind her, she looks pointedly around the small room, can't miss the black table with one black chair occupied by Clause, the two black chairs on her right, easily spots yet doesn't look to the camera in the upper left corner but "I… don't see my lawyer."

"She's coming."

"Ah," She sits down in the second of two vacant chairs. Thus far she's the one learning the most. She's learned her lawyer is a woman, which is more than she'd known before though she trusts Hetty to secure the best, and she now knows that Clause isn't averse to starting early. "Well, while we wait, could I get a Cherry Coke? I'm pretty parched." It'll also add a bit of red to the stark room.

Clause makes a brief gesture toward the camera in the upper corner and she settles in to wait.

"I thought in the meantime you'd like to tell me your story."

"My story?" 'My story is I'm innocent, so let me go.'

"You know we wouldn't have brought you in without sufficient evidence. Witnesses, video tapes, physical evidence; and the search of your home will, I'm sure, tell us a lot more." She fights to keep her eyes steady and her voice inflectionless, all the while knowing that effort is also very revealing to an experienced Investigator. "I know you know how the system works, you've probably conducted your share of interviews." By no change of expression will she counter this. She's watched many such conversations in the Boat Shed, but she's never done one of her own.

Why does this have to be her first?

"There are going to be a lot of people presenting evidence and testimony. This is your chance for you to have your say."

"I wish I could help you, I really do, but I have nothing to say. I didn't do anything and have no idea how you came to me. And much as I'd like to help you, I can't say a word until my lawyer arrives. After that, I'll be glad to tell you my story."

xxx

Ziva David, obliged to use the Xerox machine in the Document Analysis section since the one in Operations is disgorging a very large case file, walks past the stairwell and pauses when she hears Tony DiNozzo's voice filtering around the stairs.

"I just want to be sure that you're sure. You're talking about a big move."

The spot is a place that DiNozzo, being so frequently caught, should have compensated for by now. His favorite secure spot by the large Sigil is always far from secure. It is only private if you remain silent and stand in the corner at the height of the stairs, something he consistently fails to do. She thinks he would do as well to hold the clandestine conversation at his desk.

"I know you've given it a lot of thought," he says into his phone. "So have I."

She has wondered why, since his return this morning from their two days off, he has been so quiet, so absorbed. She had thought it might have something to do with Jeanne, now it appears she is correct.

"Florida is a _long_ way off; it means packing up and pretty much giving up everything you know, everyone you know."

Yes, there certainly is reason to be concerned.

"You know how I feel. If this is what you really want, I'm with you ten thousand percent. I have to be sure you're sure."

"Okay. I love you too."

He is off so suddenly she is unprepared, and this time he _would_ come around the long way instead of returning directly to the bullpen, so there is no way for her to cover when he steps away from the wall and sees her face along the length of a step. For a moment, for too long a moment, they stand in silence.

"You heard."

'In for an agora, in for a shekel.' She steps around the stairs, does so slowly, hoping that by the time they face one another directly she'll have some inspiration.

Of course it does not work. "I heard."

"What are you going to do?"

"I do not know what you mean. All I do know is that a man who has never seemed able to keep quiet about what he had for breakfast is suddenly reticent, and seemingly about so many things."

"I'm not that guy any more."

"No, Tony, you are not. In fact, you have matured dramatically in the past year. Jeanne has been a steadying influence on you, which is why I am going to say … that I am here for you should you need me."

"I don't need you."

Has she overstepped her bounds? Well, yes, she had overstepped them when she had stopped walking. "Oh."

"But thank you. I really appreciate that."

"Any time."

He walks away, this time back along the direct route to his desk, and she wonders how intentional his getting caught had been.

xxx

Thirty three minutes.

Thirty three long, silent, oppressive minutes.

She knows it's thirty three minutes because she's been steadily counting the seconds, concentrating hard on them so her expression won't slip and show how scared she's becoming.

During this time someone knocked on the door and her hope had jumped, but it was a man who handed Clause a file folder, which he'd reviewed at the door, then returned to his chair, set the folder down and watched her eyes, his own not moving at all.

Nell continues to return the detective's stare, but the confident mask is harder and harder to maintain. She's tried several times to freeze her expression, has tried to focus upon moving only selected muscles, has kept her body so still she wonders if she can imitate a freeze frame, but she knows that time and strain will eventually wear her down.

'Please, lawyer, get here before I lose.'

x

James Clause's technique is familiar; hold the silence long enough and the suspect is compelled to fill it, but she's forced that urge down a dozen times. She's played this game in her head while watching and learning countless techniques on the Boat Shed videos. She's played the 'Stare Game' with Eric many times, and if he doesn't cheat and make her bust out laughing by crossing his eyes or sticking his tongue out at her with bugged eyes and ballooned cheeks, she wins 47% of the time. She has no intention of answering any question until her lawyer, whoever she is, arrives.

But as she closes on thirty eight minutes: "Leroy Jethro Gibbs."

"Beg pardon?"

"A Supervisory Special Agent in DC. He didn't invent the Stare, but he perfected it. I understand from his team that he has seventeen of them."

"And this relates how?"

"Oh, he's the one who Vetted me. Even before Hetty Lange did, of course. I had to fly out to DC, still green from FLETC. You know those Medieval torture wringers, the ones with the spikes on the rollers? He put me through one of those until I thought I was a strip of Swiss cheese. They say once you've survived a Gibbs Vetting Interview, you feel like you've already been on the job for a year."

The door opens and a woman walks in, short brown hair, late thirties, and sets down a slim attaché case upon the table. "Nell Jones?"

"That's me," she says affably.

"Lori Berkshire, Southwest Field Office, San Diego. Sorry it took so long to get here." Only then does she address the man across the table from them. "Detective, Special Agent Jones categorically denies any and all Charges and will answer no questions. However, we wish to hear any evidence you have, after which I must be allowed to confer privately with my client."

"Fair enough."

x

From the folder before him Clause pulls out an 8 x 10 color photo of a store Cashier's station, the image taken from above and behind the Cashier, angled to show the entire bodies of customers with attention to faces. It is easy to discern detail. On the black conveyor belt beside the man are several items including a pair of coiled white ropes, a crowbar, screwdrivers, cutters, a small black penlight, heavy gloves, thin gloves and a long black can of what might be spray paint.

The woman at the counter, whose face is small in this picture, has the same short red hair as she sports but wears a _very_ small, very low cut blue halter quite inadequate to its task and blue hot pants that need much more material before they'll qualify as Daisy Dukes. White sneakers complete the ensemble.

"Very sexy, though I prefer greens," Nell admits, waving her fingers over her olive blouse and pine green skirt, feeling a lot better now that Berkshire is here, though she has no intention of showing it. She grants that the 'clothes' are collectively designed to draw attention away from the face, and from the angle of the cashier's head they've accomplished their task. She forces a smile she doesn't feel. "But that's not me. And there is no way I would ever dress like that."

Clause sets down another photo, this one an extreme enlargement of the woman's face and Nell's smile crashes.

x

She wants to deny the photo and immediately scans the image for telltale marks of photo-manipulation. "This is a fake," she declares despite her initial failure to find any evidence of doctoring. "That's not me."

"I'd admit that if this were a still picture you could claim it was faked, but this is off a video camera. We have you coming into the store, shopping through the two aisles and then coming to the counter to pay cash. It's you."

"No, it's not. I was not there on," she checks the time stamp on the bottom of the picture, "July 17th at 2:16 p.m. I was at work. I did not go shopping that day, certainly not there. Those aren't my clothes; I do _not_ dress like that."

Clause selects from the photos in the folder another which he removes and sets upon the table. Nell actually feels the blood fall from her face. The image is of her bedroom, centered on her dresser. He sets another picture upon it, a closer shot. The drawer, second from the bottom, is disarrayed and a pair of white latex gloved hands hold aloft a very skimpy and too low cut blue halter. In the next picture, presumably the same hands hold what looks to her like less than half a pair of shorts.

"No! No, those aren't _mine._ I never saw those in my life!"

She barely feels Lori Berkshire's hand close upon her arm. She wants to ignore it, to scream at the man across from her.


	4. One Hell of a Motive

Chapter Four  
One Hell of a Motive

Marty Deeks had been prepared for the concerted rush when he stepped into NCIS Headquarters, so he's neither disappointed nor disconcerted. Even the fact that Eric Beale had been ascending the steps when he'd entered yet had leaped the rail to reach him first wasn't disturbing, nor was the man's urgent insistence upon answers. Of course, his pleas not to be stampeded as he'd walked toward the four facing desks did give Hetty Lange the opportunity to assume her place up front.

"I won't sugar coat it, guys, it looks bad."

Sam's "What looks bad?" isn't far from a demand.

"For openers, Kanyicska wasn't hit on Sunday the 5th, it was 0126 last Wednesday the 1st." This news is met as he'd expected it would be.

"Oh, boy," Eric groans.

"Oh boy is right, Mister Beale," Hetty concurs.

On Tuesday, July 31, Nell had come to work sick and after her third frantic dash for the bathroom, her body seen flashing past the stairs by those below in response to running footsteps, Hetty had sent her home, enlisting Kensi to drive her. The trip had not been without incident, requiring an urgent stop at a Starbuck's. Nell had then spent two days confined to her apartment and had come in on Thursday morning pale but assuring all that she was better, a claim not fully realized until the afternoon.

"I called and asked if she wanted company both Tuesday and Wednesday after work," Eric relates, "but she didn't want to see anyone."

"In retrospect," Hetty says, "that was more unfortunate than we'd realized."

x

"I was with Clause and Frisone for a time, then stayed while Clause was interviewing Nell because I wanted to be there when the CSIs came in with their report. I wish I didn't have to say this. They have her on five Security cameras, four in a Hardware store where they say she bought a black maglight, a crowbar, a small black tool bag, some rope, screwdrivers, cutters, heavy gloves, thin gloves; all of these were identified as having been used during the murder. They have rope fibers from the wall surrounding Kanyicska's estate and from the wall of the mansion to the third floor suite. The CSIs found those ropes covered in black shoe polish. Outside the wall they found cut sections of the coiled razor wires that top the walls.

"She's said to have scaled the wall surrounding the compound, then the mansion wall to the third floor. You've seen her climb that rope in the gym." That thick rope ascends twenty three feet and her pace is only slightly less than the Field Agents'. Of course, as Sam has insisted, she doesn't have very much to lift.

"They found fibers from the gloves found in her apartment in the blackened ropes, and rope fibers on the gloves.

"The Hardware store doesn't sell grappling hooks, obviously, but they're searching Sporting Goods stores throughout the city. Traces on the wall and the third floor patio show that's what was used."

"Terrific," is Callen's opinion.

"There's another film in Kanyicska's suite, of her coming and going, a couple hours before he was found."

x

Deeks hates to bring more bad news. "The investigation has been going on for eight days. When the body was found his people actually called 911, if you can believe that."

"Still having a hard time," Hanna gripes.

"You're not the only one. Their normal method of answering something like this would be to put two behind someone's ear." He ignores Eric's outrage.

"This strategy is understandable," Hetty counters, "when you look at the matter from the viewpoint of a Federal Agent breaking into a private residence to commit murder, regardless of the appropriateness of the death. This is a ten course banquet for them."

x

"Kanyicska's people turned over a security tape that shows Nell–"

" _Not_ Nell!"

"breaking into his suite at 0126, and leaving at 0133." Deeks sympathizes with his friend. "He was found dead at 0728, also time-stamped by the same camera, when he didn't come down for breakfast."

"Seven minutes," Kensi muses.

"Doesn't take seven minutes to kill someone," Sam points out.

"Depends upon how," Callen counters. "They say how he died?"

"They did not," Deeks says, not mentioning how many times he'd tried to obtain this essential information from Frisone. "So far, they're playing this too close to the breast."

No one chooses to correct him.

"That tape _shows_ Nell?" Callen challenges.

Deeks nods. "Several of his staff recognized 'Betty Willoughby' from her Undercover Op back in May. She wore a long black wig. I watched the tape. It was her."

"A wig?" Sam asks. So far as he knows, Nell has worn a wig only one time on duty, that to portray Hetty in a decoy roll that itself had ended badly for the young woman. To portray the fictitious Betty Willoughby in late May, she'd had her hair cut short and dyed a vibrant red, which she's retained ever since, but

"She doesn't wear a wig!"

"Mister Beale." Hetty doesn't want to send him away, his insight is too valuable to this case, but if he cannot contain said insight and channel it into useful observations...

"I'm not sure if I like the wig or not," Deeks says, "but I think I do. They found a grand total of six hairs inside it, each and every one Nell's. They got positive DNA results from every strand."

"How can you like something like that?" Eric demands.

"Because when have you ever found six hairs out of six, all with follicles?"

x

"What other evidence do they have?" Hetty asks, firm in her resolve to keep a steady tone and manner.

"I didn't see anything else but the films. Frisone didn't even show me the photos CSI brought. I don't think he likes me."

"Our Counsel has filed for copies everything," Hetty assures the agents, "as part of the Motion to Discover, but it will take time for that to get before a Judge. I do not want to wait that long if anything can be obtained via any other manner." She'd already given Miss Blye instructions on that point.

"Problem," Callen hates to point out, "is that, as Betty Willoughby, Nell had one hell of a motive to do in Kanyicska."

Over the course of several days Nell, who'd originally gone in on a one-day assignment made up as a Stripper and taking advantage of Kanyicska's inclinations, had instead been pulled off the grid and had been obliged to prostitute herself in the cause of gaining information that would put the Arms Dealer away for what was intended to be a very long time. It was a goal the Courts had not supported.

The time and the depth of participation in the role hadn't been anticipated, a fault of unexpected circumstances and faulty Intel. If these things could have been foreseen, Lange would have had her extracted and damn the consequences.

But before they'd known the plan had gone so awry Nell had disappeared, resurfacing after several days in Washington DC. She'd been supposed to come back after the end of her six hour shift, after the conference she, an expert lip reader, was to observe ended. No one, most especially Nell, had anticipated what she had been forced to do to maintain her cover and to complete what was supposed to have been a simple Intelligence gathering mission listening in on conversations at a Strip Parlor.

By the time the error had been recognized, that she was to provide more than a single evening's distraction during negotiations, something she hadn't liked when asked to do but had tolerated for the sake of the mission, she was in too deeply, lost to contact and could not be extracted.

Nell had disappeared, sparking a massive yet fruitless womanhunt, until the report of a DC agent had placed her across the country and a one evening Op had turned into a several day debacle of the worst kind.

Nell had been forced to do far more than dance and watch; she'd been trapped thousands of miles from backup which had no idea where she was, and only the fortuitous recognition by the DC agent had saved her – but not from the proverbial fate worse than death.

x

Nell had said so many times over the years that she longed for the opportunity to do an Undercover Op. She'd done several with Eric, one on her own in a business, but never in the thick of danger where she had been alone. This was the first - and everything that could possibly have gone wrong, had.

Alone, incommunicado, under almost constant surveillance, she'd been forced from the role of stripper, one she'd only agreed to for God and Country, into that of a willing and agreeable prostitute.

She'd been rescued - physically - by a DC MCR Team, but it had turned out her rescue had only been physical.

Kanyicska had been arrested in Washington on the third day of a four day Comic Book Convention when _his_ Op had blown up, been shipped back to LA but had been given only a million dollar cash bail, a condition he'd met with disgusting ease.

The only one who has suffered any long term loss has been Nell herself.

x

"Once they find her laptop..."

Hetty slowly turns to Eric and he wants to crawl under Callen's desk. "What is on her laptop, Mister Beale?"

"Venting. That bastard and his posse humiliated her by making her walk around among fifteen thousand people in less than Slave Leia from 'The Empire Strikes Back' got to wear, and in that suite they – well, told me she had a lot to vent."

"Quite understandable. And unfortunate." She knows Nell has met many times with Nate Getz, who had apparently advised her to use the laptop as a way of privately expressing her feelings, but now that outlet is likely to become a detriment. "Did she mention her desire to get revenge?" She's not surprised when Eric says

"Only a couple hundred times."

x

"What next?" Sam appeals, well understanding her feelings but knowing what even an apprentice Lawyer would make of that in Court.

"Well, I'm not sure if I should say this..." Eric confesses.

"Normally, when I hear something of this kind," Hetty directs, "my inclination is to say 'say it'."

"Well, on Sunday, when we heard Kanyicska was killed I... sort of... well, I took Nell out to McCoy's to celebrate."

"That was rather tasteless, Mister Beale."

"Actually it was really delicious. She started out with French Onion soup - she _loves_ French Onion soup - then she had the lamb with date and mint and I had pasta aldente with chopped up sausage–"

"I am speaking of celebrating a man's death, an act which will quite probably be noted by the Investigating Officers and therefore certainly by the Prosecutor." She turns to her agents, managing to retain patience only with vast practice. "Miss Blye, you and Mr. Deeks return to the Station House and collect copies of every bit of evidence you can obtain under that Motion to Discover. Mr. Callen, Mr. Hanna, it is time to get answers from Kanyicska's successor."

xxx

"I understand how you felt," James Clause tells Nell after a devastating display of the photographic evidence against her, twenty seven pieces in all, "and believe me I sympathize. I heard what they put you through, the humiliation of having to walk around for all those days naked in front of thousands of people, having to play the prostitute; to let yourself be used, day in and day out, by so many men. The disgusting things they made you do. Kanyicska's people were all full of the most graphic stories that he'd brought back."

'I won't look away. He's not going to do this. I will not cry. He will Not make me Cry.'

"You hated him, but he was beyond your reach - officially. Your agency brought Charges against him, Judge set a million dollars bail and he was on the street in ten minutes. I can understand the frustration you felt; I feel it all the time when some scum-bag slips through the system. And after what he did to you, I can well understand your wanting to plug him."

"I did not 'plug him'. I didn't do anything to him. And if you say I shot him, where's the weapon? It sure wasn't my Service weapon."

"I never said it was."

"And yeah, I was frustrated that he got out, but I knew it was just a matter of time before we brought him down – _again_. I had no reason to–"

x

Clause slides a dozen photos from the folder and spreads them out on the table atop the other 'evidence' of her guilt. The images are all from the Hotel Meritz in Washington D.C., all from the Memorial Day Weekend 'Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention', all Social Media candid shots of Nell caught unaware in pictures in various rooms and situations, all of them in the utterly revealing garb Princess Leia wore in the fifth Chapter of Star Wars, the tiny and sexy garb of a slave.

Unlike the iconic Slave Leia, Nell's hair had been trimmed to the pixie style and dyed the vibrant red it is this morning. She'd kept the color because Eric Beale had liked it so much, it still flips outward above her shoulders in her distinctive style but suddenly she wants to shave it all off.

The distinguishing feature of this costume, unlike the one shown in the movie, is that this one she'd been forced to wear, the _only_ clothing she'd been allowed, does not have the brown material that had protected Carrie Fisher's breasts from worldwide exposure. Gold metal filigree held her breasts in place but provided no cover whatsoever.

One picture, obviously planned to trap unsuspecting women, features her being caught off guard in passing a running fan in one of the Dealers' Rooms, which high speed breeze blows the two purple strips before and behind far to her left, making her inability to wear panties agonizingly obvious. She remembers that moment too well, having to run from the spot, not knowing she'd been photographed for the entire Internet to enjoy. Obviously the photographer had lain in wait and was more alert to the danger than she had been. She'd avoided that area ever since.

Another fan's candid picture is a high quality close-up of her head and chest. She hadn't seen the camera, likely a phone used by a Dealer at some table, but her half-erect nipples show with agonizing clarity.

That _these_ pictures are on the Internet – Forever beyond her reach to destroy all of them – is yet one more horror added to her agony. This is worse than the DC women had suffered, because this is her body and not a photofake, and just as they could not eradicate every copy in the private collections, neither can she.

From Friday through Sunday she'd been obliged, as the undercover Betty Willoughby, stripper and worse, to wear this outfit among fifteen thousand fans, to endure eyes and cameras and invasive touches in crowded rooms, yet things were far worse in the suite Grekor Kanyicska and his three assistants trapped her in when they weren't in meetings.

That was when, freed from deals and negotiations, they made free to unwind their tensions on her. And not a Federal Agent but an Undercover Stripper made Prostitute, not officially part of her Cover but a job she couldn't avoid, she'd been made to do those horrible things to avoid being made.

And Kanyicska, or one of his posse, had a Darth Vader costume. The convention had so many costumes, she'd seen as many as three Vader's in one room at the same time, so she never knew when she was under surveillance. She could never dare to slip from Willoughby's persona, not for a moment. She had to walk through that Convention, those thousands of horny bastards as though being naked in a Sci-Fi Wet Dream outfit didn't bother her.

x

'That wasn't me. That was a role. I _had_ to do it, to let them use me, to lay down and open my legs and think of Eric and you are Not Going To Break Me. Kanyicska didn't break me. I got the Evidence to send him away for a century but they didn't Break me.

'Betty Willoughby was an immoral Slut but I Had to play her. I was trapped in that Suite thousands of miles away from Eric, from Callen and the others and had to smile and kiss and spread my legs for those God Damned _Bastards_! I had to go into the bathroom and vomit every time they left my room and cry because I couldn't get Extracted but had to go through with it to get the Damned evidence, fulfill the Damned mission, spread my legs for those Damned _Bastards_ every time they said to And You Are Not Going To Break Me!'

x

"I can understand how you felt. I've known Detectives who have had to go Undercover and do some horrible things. I can understand why you'd feel disgusted with yourself, trapped thousands of miles from help, knowing you could only lay there and take it and give them your body and let them do what they wanted and act like you enjoyed it and so finally you had to get Reven–"

"SHUT UP!" she screams, her arm sweeping the photos into a cloud. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUUP!"

"We're done here, detective," Berkshire declares, her hand clutching Nell's arm as she sits panting, trying to regain control. She doesn't recover even after Clause scoops up the pictures from the floor and steps out, closing the door behind him.

x

"Are you all right?"

'All right?', she thinks, struggling to slow her breath, to unclench her fists, to keep from crying. 'How can you ask if I'm all right when my world is going to Hell?'

"Yes," she gasps. "I'll... be all right."

Another pressure on her arm makes Nell look to her. "I need to know everything, no matter how small, and I need you to be absolutely honest and hold nothing back. I have Top Secret Clearance but I need to know everything, even if it's Classified."

She fights to unclench her fists, to ease the pressure of her nails biting into her palms. Eventually she can. She forces herself to relax, to stop breathing so hard, to stop shaking.

It won't work.

"First: did you kill Grekor Kanyicska?"

"No," is still a gasp. She fights harder, finally manages to recover enough so she can speak aloud, can admit "But I really, really wanted to."

Lori turns a page on the yellow Legal pad before them. "Tell me about it."


	5. Oil Slick

Chapter Five  
Oil Slick

Far beyond San Fernando's Woodland Hills, far beyond where anyone is likely to go if in hope of welcome, is a walled and razor wired compound accessible by a winding road to the front gate or by helicopter to the pad north of the pool. Callen already knows how many machine gun emplacements he and Sam have passed on the final thousand yards to the large, heavily fortified and electrified gate. Before coming, even before Nell's Undercover Op in May, they'd studied every bit of data about this place, even to knowing where the generators are which supply the gate with ten thousand volts of current. When they halt at said gate, no one is in sight.

/You'll be met at the front door,/ the intercom announces through the SSA's open window and the tall gate swings wide.

They are indeed met, at the apex of the Ankh shaped drive to the formidable four story Mansion, by five men in black suits. Nor do all approach. One man does while the others remain paired bookends removed from the door, each behind the four marble Corinthian pillars that hold up the extended ornate stone roof, at excellent crossfire vantage.

"Gentlemen, my name is Rogers. If you would be so kind as to leave your weapons at your seats, I assure you they will be safe."

This is no less than they'd expected. Rogers' thousand dollar suit effectively hides his weapon except under the closest inspection and the agents have no wish to display their own. This is a social call for the purpose of obtaining answers, and if it were to devolve into a situation where SIGs had to be drawn, the results would be unpleasant indeed.

Slipping the deadly instruments from holsters, they deposit them on the seats beside them, open the doors and step out.

The grounds are not just spacious, the area from high stone barrier to curving path that opens spoon-like at the patio is easily two acres without obstruction.

They have already seen from within the Operations complex that this mansion, four stories tall and seventy two rooms, sits like an island within a sea of green surrounded by distant twelve foot tall walls with only two breaks, one before and one behind at the ends of long roads.

The initial view on the large screen had raised the question 'how could Nell get to this place, reach Kanyicska's third floor suite undetected and commit a murder that wasn't discovered for five hours, then get away through this open ground?'

x

The elegant gilt and marble foyer is furnished with greater obvious wealth than all four Field Agents can gross in a year. The two closer of the suited bookends have followed Rogers and his guests, leaving the other flanking men to enjoy the view of the stupendous lawn on this August mid-afternoon.

The marble floor is so well polished that the crystal chandelier is reproduced, upside down, in exquisite clarity. The stained glass windows behind them admit the sun and a glance back as they cross the marble offers a kaleidoscopic view.

The five ascend a staircase which four could comfortably traverse and then turn right down a hallway even more opulent than anything they'd left behind. It is evident that the late Grekor Kanyicska favored art and Sam wonders if his successor shares such tastes.

The office into which they're escorted humbles the hallway and foyer, and renders such words as plush and elegant woefully inadequate. It takes six paces to reach the massive desk through immaculate and fresh raised shag carpet three inches thick, and the desk is as large as the central table of their Armory, a room Callen wishes he were back in.

The concept of mere conspicuous wealth is shattered beyond redemption by what he's seen. Outfitting this building would have made a sizable hole in the GNP of several countries he could name. The entire effect reminds him of the Shah, the Marcoses or the so-called Royal Families of countless Monarchies, equating ostentation with undeserved power.

The man behind the uberdesk, whose suit probably ran fifteen hundred, is the quintessential example of this.

x

"Gentlemen," the man, elegantly graying at the temples, greets them with a voice that probably required lessons, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"The pleasure," Callen says, "is probably doubtful."

"Nevertheless, one must make allowances, mustn't one?"

"Oh, one must," he concurs, leaving unstated who is making them.

"Casper Gutman?" Sam inquires.

"You are misinformed, sir. My name is Victor Burgoyne."

He hadn't expected the man to get it.

"The late Mr. Kanyicska's lieutenant," Callen clarifies, mimicking their host's style and doubting the man gets the sendup any more than he had Sam's. Even in these few seconds he's read the pretentious manner and it already works upon his patience.

"If you like. The late occupant of this chair, Mr. Kanyicska, did not go in for titles. They do tend to get in the way," Burgoyne says.

Considering the highly compartmentalized structure of Kanyicska's organization, where few who worked for him knew anything or anyone outside their own spheres of duties, such things would have had their drawbacks. There could well be a question of if most of the people in this Cabal even know who they're working for now, or would recognize him if standing next to him.

"Won't you be seated, gentlemen?"

Set before the desk are two gold chairs upholstered in plush red velvet which, Callen grants, does make sitting down a pleasant experience if not for the company or the purpose of this visit. When they are settled, business can be put off no longer.

x

"I'm sure you know we're here about the 'late Mr. Kanyicska'."

"An unfortunate business, but then, in our business, as it were, not entirely unexpected. Or perhaps I should say that the event, per se, was not wholly surprising. No, but imagine our surprise to discover that the culprit–"

"Alleged," Sam corrects.

"Of course," he grants after a moment's reset. "The forms and ceremonies must be observed. The alleged culprit is a United States Federal Agent. That was disconcerting indeed."

"I imagine so," Callen grants, hard pressed to end it there and not to point out that if he were running the Op it would have been a clean sweep, certain to include this oily fellow. "I understand this happened late on July 31–"

"Closer to the morning of the 1st, since it happened at 1:33."

"And yet we learned about it on the 5th."

"Our company could not come out with an announcement immediately. There were many business matters to be addressed before we went public."

"Business matters," Sam scoffs. "You make yourselves sound like part of the Fortune 500. You're not."

"True; in terms of how they determine such things, were we to be listed it would be as one of the Fortune 3." He spreads another oily smile. "However, as to the crime itself, we reported the incident immediately."

"Rather unusual," Callen says.

"Not at all. Our organization has a long history of cooperation with the established powers and authorities."

"Of course." When powers read criminal or foreign customers, of course cooperation would be paramount.

"How, exactly, did the 'late Mr. Kanyicska' meet his unfortunate end?" Sam asks, expecting at any moment the Director to yell 'CUT' and to spend several minutes berating the Writer. It feels to him that, despite the brightness of the sun shining through the polarized windows on either side of the desk, that he's stepped into a late 40's film noir. Casper Gutman, the Boss from 'The Maltese Falcon' was, he still thinks, appropriate - and would have made a better character.

"He was smothered by your Special Agent Jones. Excuse me, allegedly smothered."

Sam thinks that if the carefully primed gaff had taken place in Court, the Judge would now be instructing the jury to disregard that last statement.

x

"How was he smothered?" Callen asks, his patience wearing thin.

"How indeed. That was the interesting thing. Not by a pillow, or a plastic bag over the head. That would have been too pedestrian an act, inappropriate to the grandeur of the moment."

"Grandeur." Callen wonders how Kanyicska would have felt about his grand Death Scene or, more to the point, how Burgoyne would feel about his.

"Your little Nell is certainly the innovative - one might say inspired - murderess."

Sam sees his partner's as angry as he is. He certainly wants to put his fist through this smug bastard. "How?"

"I am not certain I should say. This appears to be the province of the Police Department. Of course, a gentleman in my position has little reason to ever become involved with the local authorities, so I would know nothing of how they operate or what they may wish to be revealed prior to the Court date."

"Of course," Callen agrees. "But you wouldn't mind telling me how whoever did this got across your perimeter, in and out without being seen."

Burgoyne sits back, the picture of contented relaxation. "Now that was interesting. Our security system is, as I'm sure you've noted, elaborate."

"Oh, I've noted."

"We do know where she gained entry through the perimeter, as the coils of razor wire were severed and the excised pieces dropped outside the wall. Yet when our records were reviewed; videos, alarm sensors and so forth, they did not show your Miss Jones enter or leave."

"And how could that be?" Sam asks, continuing the vein of his partner's send up. It still leaves a rancid taste.

"It seems that all of our Security systems had been sabotaged, remotely."

"Very convenient."

"It was an inspired bit of work, every alarm turned off, every video set on a one hour loop. The person that was charged to watch to be certain our perimeter is not breached did not even notice anything odd about the same guards passing at hourly intervals."

"Must have been embarrassing after 5:00."

"Sadly, our man goes off duty before dawn."

Callen offers a slow smile. "Very convenient."

"Not really."

"I'd like to speak to him."

"Equally sadly, the gentleman in question is indisposed."

"You mean disposed of," Sam interprets.

"Oh, not at all, sir. No, his testimony will be called upon by the proper authorities."

"Of course it will," Callen agrees, ignoring the dig.

x

"Why didn't your guards notice anything?" Sam asks.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Someone scales a wall," Callen says, liking the idea of this oily bastard begging for something, such as not to be shot when they next meet, "cuts her way in without being cut, gets across that huge lawn without being seen, scales the building, breaks into your boss' suite, kills him, probably rappels back down to the lawn, runs back to the wall and scales it again and gets away Scot free?"

"Not quite Scot free. She came out choking on the fumes from what she used to smother Grekor."

"So, coughing her lungs out, she still made it all that way without being noticed, scaled the wall again and escaped?"

"So it would seem."

"Where were your guards?" Sam cuts in.

Burgoyne shrugs. "Perhaps they were not as efficient as I would have liked. As we are so well protected and never suffer from intrusion, a measure of complacency may have set in. That may be a matter for me to address."

"I'm sure it is," Callen admits. "And your alarms? Why didn't they go off?" It's a common technique to ask a question in several ways, to look for variation in the story. Will he give the same answer this time?

"Evidently your Miss Jones deactivated them as well."

"Even the one in the suite so she could break in?"

"So it would seem."

"So she turned off the suite alarm but not the camera."

Burgoyne spreads his hands in a gesture of mystery.

"So, when you realized your boss was dead," Sam brings the conversation back on track, "you looked over the only video that didn't get hacked."

"It was only when she was in his suite that she was identified."

"Why was only that camera missed?" Perhaps this time he'll get a reasonable answer, or at least a less nonsensical one.

Burgoyne spreads his hand. "Who can say? Perhaps your Miss Jones is not as efficient as you believe her to be."

"I wouldn't say that."

"You seem quite confident in her. I was, of course, quite surprised to see her again. We knew her as Betty Willoughby, a person of, shall we say, notable ability."

"You don't say."

"I do. Betty Willoughby was recruited following a party in which she and other rather comely young women provided, shall we say, entertainment and socialization between performances. She was, to put it delicately…."

"Please do," Callen invites, knowing Burgoyne is working to push all the buttons he can.

"Miss Willoughby was first encountered as a Stripper of credible skill, whom the late Mr. Kanyicska developed a fondness for and wanted her to accompany him and several associates to a special meeting in Washington for which he was to depart that evening.

"It was I who had been charged to recruit her for that special job and to arrange her immediate departure. That she carried out her role so well, and was so appealing to Mr. Kanyicska, was instrumental in securing her position as a companion to our colleagues on their business trip."

That had been why they'd lost her, she'd been taken unexpectedly, had been under constant surveillance and had been lost for the several days that followed.

"Your two men died in that suite," Hanna has some satisfaction in pointing out. They'd died in a hail of bullets from five agents' weapons.

"So I am given to understand. But they nevertheless died happy and contented."

Sam wants to smash Burgoyne's face, but he restrains himself. To lose one's temper here will mean more than lost points. "Bet it was embarrassing when she was revealed as a Federal Agent."

"Revealed, indeed. I understand she did not enjoy her time in Washington. That is unfortunate since she was so _very_ enjoyable. Yes, Mr. Kanyicska and the others found her truly _embedded_ in her role."

x

"So you recognized her," Callen says, knowing no good can come of letting Burgoyne dwell on this. He knows what Jones had been forced to do. Her sessions with Psychologist Nate Getz are sealed and properly so, but he's gleaned much over the past two plus months and the brief revenge he'd heard the woman had gotten in one of the Dealers' Rooms of the Hotel Meritz was most deserved. He wishes she'd been able to get more.

They know Burgoyne's trying to pave the way for a claim that her killing Kanyicska is just an additional phase in that revenge. That had been obvious within the first moments of Nell's arrest.

"Indeed. Her arrival in Mr. Kanyicska's bedroom had not been a surprise in itself, however the speed at which she'd accomplished her task had been. I understand it took only seven minutes to, shall we say, bring the act to completion. I might have assumed Mr. Kanyicska arranged a discreet visit–"

"If you hadn't known she was a Federal Agent." Further, arranged visitors do not use the window. Burgoyne had scored no point with that nonsense. He can't be reaching, not when at this moment he holds so many cards. "If you hadn't reviewed the tape after finding the body."

"True. And our interview with the man on duty in the security room was unhelpful."

"I'm sure. But Nell is a redhead, and her hair is short. The woman described to us had long black hair."

"Evidently a wig. We actually found the black wig on the grounds and turned it over to the authorities."

"She lost the wig." He lays it on thickly, admitting he's wasting the effort.

"At the base of the wall she'd scaled. Evidently it had blown off when she'd reached the top and she did not want to risk capture by returning for it."

For all the evidentlies he throws out, the man seems to work from very little evidence but more than enough supposition. "Risk capture."

"Yes."

"Prior to an alarm being sounded."

Burgoyne spreads his hands. "Who can fathom the logic of women?"

x

"Well, that seems to be all," Callen says, having had more than too much. "Unless there's something more you want to tell us."

Burgoyne makes an obvious show of consideration. "No, I can't think of anything more, gentlemen."

"No, I don't think you can."

On the stairs, following Rogers and leading the two guards, Hanna mutters to Callen, "Playing us with every word."

"I really want my gun."


	6. You Do Want Revenge

Chapter Six  
You Do Want Revenge

Tim and Ziva have patiently endured the usual checks, secured their weapons in glorified mailboxes and all other carried possessions in a secured room, signed for the same, then worked their way through the barred corridors, through the courtyard into the next building. Now they head for the common Visitors' Area and the smaller Attorney Interview Rooms of the Maryland State Prison for Women.

"She will try to get into your head," Ziva says as they walk down the final corridor.

"I know. If she does it too much, she may find my hands around her throat." The woman crashes to a stop, making him turn. "Kidding."

"Kidding."

"Shav and I talked about this. A lot. She's cast off the idea of revenge."

She remembers the woman doesn't want revenge against Charles Morley either, but if either of them had done to her what they'd done to the priest, they would be dead, efficiently and most painfully. "And you?"

He smiles. "I won't make it _too_ violent."

He resumes his trek, hiding his satisfaction at her discomfort. Gibbs will send her to keep him in line, will he?

x

There are fourteen women with their guests in the Visitors' Room, some familiar to him from his first visit. He hadn't gotten along with many of them, except at the end with his then-target. At least that time he'd gotten to see Brenda Carter, a guard and old friend with whom he'd gone through FLETC. This time he doesn't expect anything so pleasant as his first visit.

He'd requested this assignment on Monday, had hoped to accomplish it alone but Gibbs had decided to send _two_ agents today, a whole three days later. Granted it'd been Director Shepherd who'd made that decision, but it still annoys him.

It's not that he objects to Zee's company or aid, but he'd wanted to confront Elizabeth McFadden alone. She had programmed, among too many others, Shav to murder him and then kill herself, and only Divine Intervention had prevented that. He wants to confront McFadden, and it's that desire that makes him decide that Gibbs, and Shepherd, had been right.

x

The guard who escorted them into the Visitors' Room and into the smaller Interview Room 2 had left to bring McFadden. Tim dislikes that this room had been chosen, but the other one is in use. He has far too many unpleasant - and painful - memories of his last times in here.

It's fifteen minutes later that the officer returns and pulls a tall woman inside. She's dressed in the common Inmate style, orange pants and a white tee shirt that's so obviously her choice, for it's tight enough to announce the lack of a bra.

"A MAAAAAAN!" is her cry of utter delight as the door closes behind her.

"You have men here," Ziva counters. She doesn't appreciate the 'Roger Rabbit' reference and doubts even Tony would.

The faux smile sloughs off, discarded as waste. "We have Guards here. Hardly the same thing."

"Special Agents Tim McGee, Ziva David," he says in the highly doubtful event that she's forgotten.

"McGee McGee McGee McGee McGee... Oh _yes_ , I remember; you're Siobhan O'Mallory's friend."

"No," he says, his tone glacial. "I'm Siobhan McGee's husband."

Ziva sees this as the high point of their session. From here they shall lose ground quickly.

x

"Congratulations," McFadden says with utter lack of sincerity as she sits down at the square wooden table in the middle of the room, not taking her eyes off his. "She's an interesting woman. What a mixture of inhibitions, apprehensions, restrictions, self-defeats, denials and restraints. I could have worked on her for years." She gives him a saccharine smile he wants to hit.

"Did you know that she _refused_ to love you? Actually refused. Wouldn't hear of it. Wouldn't even conceive of it, let alone discuss it. It was absolutely delicious. She was determined not to be 'the other woman' while you were so seriously dating... Ah, _yes,_ Ziva _David_." She sits back. "Well, this is a treat. The two people who drove my patient quite out of her mind, together in one room. Let's see, I could put you down for Group Session a week from Tuesday."

Tim glares at her, reaching for Gibbs' #8 but can't hit it. Ziva had warned him the woman would try to get under him, and she's done it within sixty seconds. He'd known Shav had suffered much in those days while she'd kept her silence, but he'd thought they'd put it behind them. But she'd opened to this woman pains that it took her so much longer to tell him. He'd known this, he just hadn't expected...

"You programmed her to try to kill me, and then _herself_."

"I did my best," she says with a shrug, "and I do admit that sometimes one must deal with setbacks. We can't all be perfect. The best laid plans of cats and women..." She gives him a slow smile and he pictures ripping it off.

"We're not here to discuss that." He can't manage a dismissive tone, not with such fire charring his heart.

"Really. You mean that after all this time you're not even a tad interested in Revenge? I nearly killed you both, and it would have been so delicious to have O'Mallory slit your throat and then do herself with the bloody blade. I know so much about you from your little priestess. Did you know she was even willing to Renounce her Vows if only you would have chosen her over your Jewish cuntubine?"

He knows this is an absolute lie, but he can't keep his feelings from his eyes.

x

"Yes, you do want Revenge. I knew there's a streak of cruelty in there, despite her faith in you. You would just _love_ to get me alone in a locked... ohhhhh, that's right, we _are_ alone in a locked room. Well," she gradually acknowledges Ziva's presence, "not quite alone. You do have your Assassin on your leash, the other woman's other woman, as it were." She leans forward, elbows on the table. "Tell me, while you were making the beast with two backs every chance you got, did you give any thought to little Siobhan as you ripped her soul to shreds and crumpled her heart up while she cried herself to sleep every night in that lonely Rectory?"

x

He fights harder, manages after too many scorched moments to speak without any tone at all. "My relationship with my wife survived you. I don't need to settle any score with you." He wants to, wants his hands about her throat until she croaks for mercy, and only the thought of what Shav would say keeps him in his chair.

"Good. I'm rather fond of my skin being all in one piece. But then again, isn't there a rule regarding personal involvement while on the job?"

It's Rule 20, but he won't tell her that. Is it enough if he just pictures the punishment yet talks through it? If he can separate business from very satisfying pleasure, he can get through this and go back to work. Seventy five years…. "Not what we're here for."

"Then tell me, why do you pull me out of a Therapy Session with my patient?"

"Patient?"

"Well," she says with a too casual shrug, "since I'm here for seventy five years - thank you very much - and I'm unlikely to have a Practice to return to when I get out, I donate my services to my fellow inmates."

"I'm not surprised," he says, thinking he should have seen the obvious.

"No? I would think you would be."

"No, because I think you learn a lot about them in return for this service. They say 'Knowledge is power', and if so then Information is the Arsenal."

McFadden shrugs.

x

Ziva pulls her attention. "Your source for the CDs you used to program your victims, the one who had Dr. Samuel Richards eliminated. Who is it?"

"You're very direct."

"I am a direct woman. We believe that whomever it was has branched out into chemical warfare."

"Nice. And how do you think this ties to me?"

"Because the ones who executed the plan executed themselves."

"Ah. Does make it difficult to get answers as to who and how. And why."

Neither Agent answers.

x

"So you think that I, who has not had so much as a Greeting card in so many months, know something that will help you in your search."

Silence is an effective draw.

She shakes her head. "My employer, if he is the one doing this, is not a forgiving man. He and his associates don't like to be betrayed. What incentive do you have for me to take that risk?"

Under the table, Tim touches Ziva's leg with the toe of his shoe and tells McFadden "We can see your Sentence commuted."

A long stare, very long, locks Tim and McFadden. Ziva remains silent, her own gaze steady. This, Tony would say, is out of the infield, but to break in will destroy whatever play Tim has in mind and then they might as well go home, this resource obliterated. Twenty seconds does not break the stalemate. Neither does forty.

"Not good enough," she finally announces after more than sixty. Neither agent answers. "They have a long reach. Did I mention that they're unforgiving. Ask Sam Richards if you don't believe me."

"Witness Protection," Tim bids. "New identity, new history, new location, active Protection and the aid of a Handler."

For a longer time McFadden considers. Finally: "Let me think about this."

xx

Ziva and he are several yards down the corridor leading to the outside when Tim stops and pulls out his cell phone. The call is answered in a moment.

/Hoigh, a _rún mo chroí,_ / Siobhan answers in high delight, but 'uh roon muh khree', secret of my heart, is so intimate that it stings worse _._

"Sweetheart?"

The joy crashes hard. /What's wrong?"/

He wishes he'd taken a breath. She can always read him better than he can her. "Sweetheart, did I hurt you?"

Ziva walks further down the corridor.

/A chuisle?/ He can't say anything. /Of course you haven't hurt me./

"Can we talk?"

Long pause, cautious confusion. /Darling, we are talking./

"No. This eveni– I need to... Can we talk tonight?"

/Of course we will./

"I love you."

/I love you too./

He presses the disconnect, feeling like a worse idiot.

x

Ziva, having waited some feet away, comes back. "Tim?"

He's not sure he wants to hear this. No, he doesn't want to hear it, but he says cautiously "Zee?"

"I want you to understand this. Since I have known you, you have hurt me." He was right, this stings worse, but she's not done. "You have hurt Michelle. You have hurt Siobhan. You have even hurt Kate, or I am sure that you did."

"Zee–"

"But you have never intentionally done so."

 _xxx_

Marty Deeks hadn't expected to be back at the Precinct House so soon. There were times, when working Undercover, when he wasn't in this building for days or weeks at a time, now he's here twice in a few hours. This time the difference is that he's with Kensi facing Jim Clause and Barry Frisone.

"What, you trying to crowd us, Deeks?" Frisone, on their left, demands, glaring at the pair standing beside the facing desks. Around them, the too many men and women work on a variety of duties, but individual quiet doesn't translate into general.

"'smatter, Frisone, feeling overwhelmed?"

"The day you could overwhelm me." His disgust is solid enough to eat, and the opening was merely an appetizer. "While you sit in that converted water hole with a tech center out of Battlestar Galactica, we've been doing _real_ Police work, hitting the street and running down clues."

"And what did you find?"

"You'll find out at your girlfriend's trial."

Wrong thing to say, wrong way to say it, but after a glance at Kensi, long enough to read her thoughts, he locks onto business. "Look, you know why we're here."

"No, why are you here? You got something against real cops?"

Clause says. "Why don't you take a break, Baar? I can handle this."

"Yeah," he says, getting up and pushing his chair in. "I'll do that." As he walks away, "F'ing Feds" filters back.

x

"Don't mind him," Clause says as the agents take the offered chairs at the side of the desks. "This case has too many sticks in it. The Captain, Commissioner, Department of Justice, your SecNav and Naval Operations Chief and your Commandant, the Mayor, the Governor, the beloved Press…. I'm waiting for the minute when this gets out and every perp you guys ever took down files a hundred forty thousand motions to have every case you guys have ever done overturned, at taxpayer expense.

"Our Legal Division is already on it," Kensi assures him.

"Look, I neither know nor care if your gal offed that bastard. If she did I'd give her a medal, but a Fed breaking into someone's home in the middle of the night and offing _anyone_ after buying all the props sticks in too many claws, and everybody's uncle has his claws in this one."

"I sympathize," Kensi assures him. "We have the same stack come down on us any time a high profile case comes up."

"And of course they want this solved last week," Deeks says.

"We caught it on the first, rolled in with four more Units into a place we've been pretending doesn't exist because it's so fortified you couldn't get into before every bit of evidence was scrubbed, and we were invited.

"Before last Wednesday no one got in because we'd never amassed enough proof anything was going on in there. Kanyicska used it as one of two headquarters, the other in Sacramento and so far as I know the locals haven't cracked that one either. But no one ever went to either place to buy or sell. There were never any weapons going in or out, no money trails, that operation was so clean you could eat off it. We know he has a slew of places he does his business at, too many to watch even if we could get Intel that a meet's going down."

"When we did our initial research for an Undercover Op," Deeks tells him, "it turned out that he owned 42 places in LA and 67 in Sacramento."

"We only ID'd 36 here and Sacramento PD had 51."

"There are a lot on places owned by shells of shells," Kensi says, "and they're all low scale sites; grocery and 99 cent stores, a laundromat, game stores, phone stores, computer repair, shoe stores, a couple of Chinese or Italian or TexMex take-outs, all with three or four tables, an off-the-avenue strip club that has only two dance tables and a couple of chairs, a lot of 'mom and pop' stores, all very low end."

"We only got lucky with the strip club," Deeks says. "We have a friend at ATF who told us that something was going down that we would be interested in, and that because ATF had been tailing the other party in that meeting. Aaron Hertzfeld contacted us because their target had connections to the Navy. That gave us enough time to install Nell into the club as an independent Entertainer. There's very rapid turnover in that kind of business because dancers freelance. Girls come in, they pay for so many hours of table time, which is why tips are such an issue."

"Who you telling?"

"Sorry. Anyway, we got a day's heads up, she took some lessons, dyed her hair, got in that next afternoon."

x

Kensi had wanted to go in on that one, but she had two drawbacks: she wasn't the type that Kanyicska was likely to notice, Nell was, and Nell was not an active Field Agent. Though the Analyst did have field experience, her real advantages were height, red hair and a face no one knew.

She'd given Nell as much training as she could, the gym locked most particularly against her partner, for in Deeks' presence the most basic training would have been impossible. She had stripped on two occasions, long before the Analyst's time, but she couldn't get away with covering for the woman.

She deeply regrets what had happened to her as a result.

"Did the Op work?" Clause asks.

She has a feeling he knows, perhaps knows too much despite his disarming manner. "The Op was a success, but that was all the good there was."

x

"Ah." Clause obviously doesn't want to get into that any more than Kensi does, so it's obvious he knows. He may not have any details on the Op, almost certainly does not, but what had happened in DC had fired the Internet for weeks. Even if he hadn't known, Kanyicska's – Burgoyne's people would have made sure he and Barry Frisone found out.

"When we got to Kanyicska's suite, the Crime Scene, it was on the third floor and fit for the Duke of Windsor. The body was on the bed, face up, black faced."

"Black faced?" Deeks asks. When someone dies there are color changes, but black isn't one of them.

Kensi leans an inch forward. "How is Nell supposed to have killed Kanyicska?"

"Flex-Seal."

"Come again?" Deeks prompts.

"Flex-Seal," Clause confirms, showing the agents the picture of the check-out at the Hardware store, Nell photographed buying numerous items, including a tall black spray can. "It coated the guy's whole face, even got in his mouth. It's quick drying, went on thick, sealed his nose and mouth and he suffocated." He shows them a picture of the body laying atop the bed, the face covered by a smooth layer of black. "It also means it didn't take much strength at all, unlike if you forced a pillow or a plastic bag in place and held on. From the sheets, it looks like she straddled him, knelt on his arms and sprayed. Doctor Pine says there were as many as nine layers covering the face to a quarter of an inch thick.

He pulls out another picture, this a close downward angle of an under sink cabinet crowded with cans, bottles, brushes, all the usual items that get crammed into such a space and touches the image of the can set against the left side.

"CSU found it this morning in her bathroom; the thick and thin gloves in a closet, in a winter box; the ropes, blackened with shoe polish, in another box in a different closet; the black shoe polish one of several colors we found in her bedroom by a line of shoes; the tools in the kitchen mixed in with some others under the sink, basically everything hidden in plain sight."

x

Deeks is taken by the thoroughness of the setup. Had he come across such a treasure trove, he'd have decided Nell had a lotta 'splainin to do. "What else do you have?"

"Something really curious, not that it matters."

"I like things that don't matter."

"Seems she wiped her fingerprints off everything before stashing them in her apartment. The only thing we found with prints was the Flex-Seal."

"Why would she skip that?" Kensi asks, hoping for an admission that things are not as they seem.

"Don't know. It didn't help her to wipe everything, nor does the Prosecution, when she goes to trial, need her prints on anything except the can. Still, curious."

'Darn right it is,' Deeks thinks, not that he'll discuss the significance of it with anyone before he does so with Hetty. He has his ideas.

"You should know we found where she got the grappling hooks, 'C&S Sporting' on San Rafael. That's what Barry was hinting at. Uniforms on neighborhood beat got that day before yesterday and called us over. There's no record on the cameras, busted, but the clerk does remember your Miss Jones from middle of last month."

"I'm sure he does, if whoever it was was wearing the same outfit as at the Hardware store," he says, feeling more disgusted by the moment.

"Could be, but they don't get much call for the hooks. Only reason they had them was a Sports Club reneged on their special order so the stuff sat on a shelf for months. That is until 'a little slip of a redhead' bought two of them last month."

"And of course didn't use a credit card."

"Who're you kidding?"

Can things get worse? "What else?"

"We have her laptop, which probably contains many, many gems. Anything else," Clause says, "you need a Warrant or else a Motion to Discover."

"Already filed."

He reaches for a flash drive set under his lamp. "Well, when we get it, this has everything we have." He sets it down again and looks to the large clock on the wall. "You know, if this is going to take much longer, I need some coffee. How about you?"

"Thank you."

He walks out without another sign that he's thinking about the agents.

x

As soon as she sees in Deeks' eyes that it's safe, Kensi picks up the flash drive while pulling her PDA from her jeans pocket. She plugs the drive into a port and calls up an App. "Nell gave me this one a while ago."

"How come I don't have one?"

"When I talk to her, I look at her eyes, not her boobs."

"Heh heh. This going to take long?" Deeks asks, trying not to be seen watching everyone in the room.

"Nope," she assures him, closes out the system, pulls the drive out, sets it exactly where it had been on the desk and pockets her device.

"Not bad."

x

When Clause returns with the three coffees, the rest of the conversation revolves around the initial investigation, the trail back to the Hardware and Sporting stores, the analysis of the DNA found in the black wig (six strands out of six had indeed set off Cop Alarms but the Prosecutor had taken it from a gift Setup to a slam dunk) and the search of Nell's apartment.

No one glances at the flash drive.


	7. Court, Diamond and Arena

Chapter Seven  
Court, Diamond and Arena

For yet another evening Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron are transported back the half hour journey to their cell, the thirty by thirty steel trap where they and their loved ones have been imprisoned for the past week. Each time they're moved they're silenced and blinded by ball gags strapped tight about their heads and by black bags drawn firmly about their necks.

Inside the trap their feelings of hopelessness have grown daily. Their clothing has long ago been replaced by plain gray shifts, for all the difference in material they're little more than long gunny sacks with holes cut out for head and arms, obvious in their captors' intent to humiliate and demean. The three scientists fare only slightly better, if one can call white lab coats over too long worn underwear an improvement.

Chloe has been treated for her rifle wound only after a stalemate of wills; none of the scientists would work until the girl had decent medical attention.

Frankly they're all still surprised that the stand off had worked.

But the work progresses slowly. The scientists had determined what had gone wrong with the device they're being forced to build: the hard won plans are not complete, and the quality of many of the parts are inferior. It will take many days work to correct the shortages.

At least that's the lie they've told their captors.

x

"We can _not_ finish building this thing," Jeremy Cintron whispers as quietly as he can, yet his intensity burns the air between them and their families.

"We have to," Catherine Bachman declares. As soon as they were set free of their restraints she'd gone immediately to her daughter, as she had every day, cradling her in her arms as the girl lies upon the steel floor, motionless lest any activity undo the First Aid which is the best they were able to do for her. "They shot Chloe as an example," she grates with her arm about her wounded daughter. "These Techs are not _stupid_. They're not scientists, they follow the plans we and the others made but they have brains. What do you think will happen if someone realizes we're dragging our feet?"

Their loved ones, so many, look on, silent witnesses to an argument tested too many times with no more progress to a resolution than there is hope.

"Better than finishing this," Cintron insists.

Mark Esposito declares "You can talk, Jeremy. Not your family in here." He'd been friends with the black man but this horror strains too much.

Jeremy puts his arm about the silent woman beside him. "You think I don't care about Rita? And about your families? That's _bull_. But if this bastard gets hold of Dragonfire, we're talking Armageddon. The PDC is the Ultimate Weapon. There's no defense, _zero_ survivability. Once that madman has control of it, that's it. Endgame."

Neither scientist considers contradicting him. You can't contradict the truth.

xxx

"Eric," Callen calls as he and Sam cross the long Operations Center, "Nell is supposed to have hacked Kanyicska's security cameras to loop them so no one would know she was there, but to miss the one in his suite."

"You can't think she–"

"Of course not," he cuts off the man's outrage. "But if she could do what they say she did, how would she? And _could_ she have missed the one in his suite?"

"I don't see how. You'd have to hack the Server, make the changes to all the cameras but specifically exclude the one in his rooms."

"Double check. Prove that one isn't on a separate system."

"You've got it," he declares, turning to his computer, his tight muscles screaming their need to assault someone, starting with Burgoyne and working outward.

xxx

Nell is escorted by Lori Berkshire across and down the street from the Police Station to Room 7-3, the third of the seventh floor Municipal Building Court rooms, five in a long row across from the elevator bank and around a corner, the corridor too crowded for her taste. However, she's gratified to see Henrietta Lange rise from a bench to meet them. Hetty has always, to her mind, been like an atomic bomb, small in stature but devastating in effect.

"Hetty," Berkshire greets the diminutive woman.

"Lori, once again thank you for your help."

"No problem. Meeting the woman who took down one of the biggest Arms Dealers in the world is something I would never have missed."

"Wait a minute!" Nell's shocked. This woman is supposed to be on her side.

"Oh, I don't mean you," she says. "I mean I'm looking forward to seeing who actually did it."

"Well," Hetty says, "let's get through this one first."

"Again, no problem. Simple bail hearing, we'll be out in twenty minutes."

x

They enter Room 3, and it's forty eight minutes of hearing cases from within the gallery before the Bailiff announces "Case 38297-3, People vs. Nell Jones, Murder in the First Degree."

Nell had thought she was ready, but to hear the words freezes her in her seat. This is real. They really think she did this. They're going to try to prove it. It takes a pull from Berkshire and a nudge from Hetty to get her on her feet, and she walks in as straight a line as she can. She's grateful as she steps through the wooden gate between gallery and well that Berkshire remains on her left and especially that Hetty bolsters her on her right. They step behind the table to her left.

"ADA Hanna?" The judge could have gone for so long without saying that. She hadn't paid attention to his name before, but the suited man to her right is under thirty and a thin five eight.

"Your Honor, the accused is suspected of acting with predetermination and deliberation to murder Mr. Grekor Kanyicska in his home by smothering him in his bed. To accomplish this, she purchased certain materials which were subsequently found in her home. She broke into the decedent's home, is on film having done this and leaving after the event. The People move for Remand pending Trial."

'How long will _that_ take?' she thinks. The way the Courts are booked, this could take months.

The Judge looks to his right. "Counsel?"

"Special Agent Lori Berkshire, your Honor, NCIS Legal, San Diego; Licensed in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Your Honor, the accused is a United States Federal Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who has been Vetted by the Department of Defense and issued a Security Clearance of 'Top Secret', their highest Classification. She is not a Flight Risk and looks forward to clearing herself of these Charges. Defense requests Bail."

He looks to Hetty. "And you are?"

"Henrietta Lange, your Honor, in Charge of NCIS' Office of Special Projects and Special Agent Jones' boss. NCIS will guarantee such bond as you shall set." It always helps to use positive and progressive terms.

The robed man consults a book upon his bench, turns two pages, picks up a pen and makes an entry, then addresses Berkshire. "Trial date is set for October 10. In the meantime, I set bail in the amount of $20,000. See the Court Clerk." He bangs his gavel. "Bailiff, call the next case."

"Case 38361-2, People vs..." is the last thing Nell cares to hear as the three women step from behind the table and move to the desk at the left corner.

xxx

The sun, even in Daylight Saving Time, is well upon its downward course by the time two cars pull into the drive outside the converted (and Condemned, according to the sign by the door) Water Works Administration building, now NCIS Headquarters. But before any of the women can open the main door it flies inward, yanked by a tall and very anxious man. "You're back!"

"I'm back," Nell confirms, not altogether sure he didn't track her from the moment they'd left the Municipal Building to be down here at the right second.

She can see he wants to give her a more fervent greeting if only he dared. Perhaps later.

Definitely later.

Upstairs in the Operations Center with the Field Agents, she discovers he's dared one thing: there's a tall vase of red roses beside her keyboard. Set in the cluster's center is a single pure white one.

Surrounded by so many people, she can only communicate by eye contact with her partner.

x

Hetty pulls their attentions to business. "We need to consider where we stand."

"Violated," is Nell's succinct conclusion.

"That they have manipulated events is obvious," Hetty says.

"The reason behind the reason is what concerns me," is Callen's position.

"Excuse me," Deeks asks. "The reason behind the reason?"

"That someone in his organization hit Kanyicska," Hetty says, "is plain. Burgoyne is at the top of my very short list. In fact, his is the only name on it."

"But if it was a palace coup," Sam asks, "who the hell would care? I mean, Intelligence would have to expand an already existing dossier on Burgoyne to put him in the big chair, draw a new chart of the top brass, but beyond that usual bit of work, who'd care how the job was done? Hit Kanyicska or leave him alone, everybody knows who did it without tripping a single alarm."

"Why go through the complexity of framing Nell?" Callen asks. "What's to gain?"

"They know we'd bend every effort to clear her," Deeks says.

"Distracting us from what?" Kensi asks.

"Let us consider how it was done," Hetty directs. "That may prove revealing as to 'why'."

"According to the files," Deeks says, "she supposedly bought Flex-Seal, gloves, rope that was blackened with shoe polish, which was also found on the thick pair of gloves."

"I have shoe polish, of course."

"But the key is they claim their Security system was hacked," Eric says. "I'm still working on analyzing that. So far, I can't see any way of accidently missing the camera in his suite. You have to actively exclude it."

"Where precisely were you while Kanyicska was getting killed?" Sam asks. It's important to get the details exact to make certain Berkshire knows what she's up against.

"Throwing up my guts."

x

Nell had come into work on July 31st already sick. Kensi tells the Lawyer that "When she came out of the bathroom for the third time at 0840 looking like a truck hit her, Hetty asked me to drive her home."

"It was an adventure," Nell declares. "For that and the next day I was sicker than a dead and decaying dog."

The image, for the hyperbole, does convey her situation. "You were alone all the time?" Lori asks. She doesn't miss the micro flicker of her eyes, that if she'd allowed it Nell would have glanced at the tall, deeply concerned man at her side.

"Eric wanted to come over after work, but I didn't want to see anyone. It was only on the 2nd that I managed to drag myself in, but I didn't feel okay until midway through the day."

"What did you take?" Callen asks.

"A whole bottle of Pepto-Bismol. It didn't help."

That much of the potent medication should have done far more than 'help'.

"So let's look at it," Berkshire says. "You go home alone, Kanyicska dies that night, you're home the whole next day into the following, no witnesses."

"Gotta love the timing," Sam says.

"Mr. Deeks, you and Miss Blye check everything in that apartment," Hetty orders. "Need be, we'll ship the whole thing to Abby Sciuto's lab in DC. I understand that she works 16 hours per day, she should turn up something in a reasonably short time."

"Good thing it's a small apartment," Nell says, liking the situation less with every word.

"As for tonight, you cannot return home and I do not want you alone. There's plenty of room in my home."

"Oh, I know." She'd been there as Hetty.

"Or if you want," Kensi says, "you could bunk with–"

" _She'll stay with me._ "

The force turns all eyes to Eric.

x

"Well that is - I could - we could - I have plenty of - we could keep - I'd be able to - we could keep working, on the - well, I mean there's–"

"I guess I'll stay with Eric. Thank you, Eric."

"Don't mention it."

"I won't," she assures him.

"Well, now that that's settled," Hetty says, managing to keep a smile from pulling at her lips, "Miss Berkshire, I happen to own several properties, so you need not concern yourself with lodgings. You can review all the case materials we have, as well as what is contained on the LAPD's flash drive. Mr. Deeks, Miss Blye, considering the timing of Miss Jones' illness, I want you to collect _everything_ that she ate, drank or touched and immediately ship it to Miss Sciuto's Forensics Lab in DC. I shall contact her." She looks up to Callen. "In the meantime, a moment of your time if you please."

A questioning glance to Sam provides no revelation, so he follows the woman out the door and downstairs to her enclave, where he takes the seat before her desk.

x

Settling herself, she reaches for a short stack of mail. "This came this morning, mailed from Headquarters three days ago, but in light of what is happening I was going to set it aside. Now I am not as certain that I should." She passes the envelope to him and he draws out a single folded sheet. At the top, in Old English print, large and bold, he reads 'Declaration of War'.

It's just outré enough for him to read the impressively formatted ancient text.

"The Warriors of DC NCIS, by these presents, declare a State of War against the forces of LA OSP NCIS, Battle to be joined on the First Monday of September, known in the _barbaric_ calendar as Labor Day at high twelve upon the Field of Honor, otherwise known among the plebes as the Navy Yard Baseball Diamond, for a 9 Part Contest of Skill and Courage. For the Director; Abby Sciuto." He sets the paper down. "They're challenging us to a baseball game? Now?"

"Well, in fact three days ago. I called the Director, and it seems this stemmed from a similar contest held earlier this summer, the men against the women."

"How'd that turn out?"

"I'm told the ladies, the 'Enkiss Angels', decimated the gentlemen in an abbreviated game, by a score of 7 to 1 in the middle of the 2nd."

"And now they're looking to try their luck with us?"

"Well, it is my understanding that that game had been something of a Grudge Match, while this one would be more on the order of a Charity Exhibition."

"Well, who's getting the charity, and who's gonna be on exhibition? You know, never mind, we don't have nine to spare."

"I reminded her of that, and they have agreed to supply to us a Pitcher and Catcher out of the previous contesting teams.

"Now, as I said, I was going to put this aside with our regrets, particularly in light of our current dilemma, until I learned that tickets will be priced at $25 and all proceeds of the contest will be turned over to the Deceased Agents' Children's Fund."

Callen gives her a rueful smile. "They've got us by the short ones, don't they?"

"So it would seem." She looks into his thoughts, developing so well on his face. "So, shall I respond to this challenge in the rousing Affirmative?"

He hands the paper back. "We'll decimate them."

xxx

In DC, Alpha shift is ending when Tony DiNozzo steps off the elevator, turns right and sees Gibbs coming off the steps from four to enter the bullpen a second before him. Tony's attention is on getting home at a reasonable hour and a familiar sense has him drawing odds on his chances as he watches Gibbs hand Ziva a file folder an instant before he passes behind the boss.

"DiNozzo, just in time," is how Gibbs greets him. He hasn't even reached his desk and as he turns he can see his chances of a relaxing evening with Jeanne Benoit winging their way through the skylight.

"Always in time, boss," he replies briskly. He has a feeling that the bright tailed, bushy eyed routine isn't going to help him fight his fate.

"You and Ziva get on to the Maryland Women's Prison. Interview McFadden, find out what she knows. Ziva will brief you on the way."

He sees McGee's attention pulled off of whatever is on his own screen and his distress lights the room. That had been his assignment a few hours ago.

"Boss, we were just there," McGee protests.

Gibbs doesn't glance at him, but the expression on Ziva's face is eloquent and it makes DiNozzo anxious to be gone. He follows the rapidly walking woman, ready to learn what's going on when they're safe inside the elevator.

x

"Boss?"

"You're not going, McGee." He can hardly believe the man would question him.

"But–"

"Come here."

McGee leaves his desk and, when the man gets close he gives him a resounding head slap such as he hasn't dealt out in years.

"Did you think you were going to get away with that?" He's been restraining his temper since leaving Shepherd; now there's no need.

"Boss, I'm sorry. She was pushing my–"

"She didn't push your buttons - she _owned_ you, McGee."

"I'm sorry. I–"

"What were you going to do? _Forge_ papers from Justice, get her to open up and then pull the rug out from under her?"

The essence of making such deals as the man had unilaterally made is that the good guys always go through with them, because if ever it got out that the good guys' Word wasn't worth anything, a valuable resource in Criminal Investigation would vanish, possibly forever across the board, so McGee's answer obviously would never be

"Yes."

x

Gibbs is halted, surprise overwhelming anger. "Revenge, McGee?"

"Why not? If anyone deserves–"

The rage he'd been letting filter out explodes. "It isn't bad enough NCIS already has one Agent arrested for Murder, you go and pull a stunt like this? Her lawyers would slaughter you, and when Justice found out you forged their paperwork–" Another wake up call, harder than the first, staggers the man. "You do something like this again, I'll have your _badge_. You got that?"

"Got it."

"Get out."


	8. Criminal Scene

Chapter Eight  
Criminal Scene

Kensi Blye has a large collapsed FedEx box already filled with Evidence bags tucked under her arm while Deeks carries the box of latex gloves and an LAPD seal sticker as Nell unlocks her third floor apartment on Dearborn Ave between Tweedy and Missouri. The stairs from the over-sized lobby led up the side with the two apartments on each floor extending to their left, the doors midway to the end and facing one another.

Deeks steps past Nell before she can open the door and slits the large sticker placed upon the door and frame with a pocket knife so that, when they leave, he can place their sticker directly over the breached one. When Nell leads the way in, she stops so suddenly that Kensi collides with her.

She can see over the petite woman's head and says nothing as she feels Nell fight her temper under control. It's a slow and not too successful battle.

LAPD CSU and Uniformed Officers had this morning gone through the apartment searching for evidence of murder and had opened everything, tossing anything they found onto the floor. They'd had a shopping list contained in the Search Warrant that included blackened rope, Flex-Seal, tools and a variety of other items, and the great problem is that they'd found everything they'd sought, and those scattered throughout the apartment - just like everything of value to her.

Uncharacteristically, Marty Deeks remains silent, though Kensi can think of a dozen quips that might have passed his lips if it hadn't been a friend's apartment that had been so violated. She steps around Nell to where she can see the rigid woman and doesn't like what she sees. Anger is there, outrage, violation, and when she looks closely she can see the racing blood pulsing in her neck. Nell's eyes are damp but she can see the fight to contain this. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she lies, but Kensi can see how much force it took to get the word out.

She turns to her partner. "What are you waiting for?"

"Huh?"

She waves her hand toward the room. "Clean up."

"Right."

She sees he's read her silent privacy message and beckons Nell left toward the bedroom. She also knows that her partner's search will be as thorough as LAPD's but much more neat. "Come on."

x

When the door is closed, she turns to the petite redhead who stares at this destroyed room. If the living room had been invaded, the bedroom is a true violation. The mattress is half off the bed, pillows removed from cases and tossed upon the floor, blankets scattered. All her drawers are open, clothing, jewelry and other items scattered on the floor.

" _HEY._ "

Nell rushes to the items scattered on the floor before the night table beside the bed, snatches and shoves them into the drawer as quickly as her hands can move and she slams it shut. Kensi pointedly ignores this.

"Nell."

" _WHAT_?" she whirls, blushing brightly.

"I need you to tell me everything that happened in here from the day you got sick onward." Nell's eyes flicker to the slammed drawer and the shame in her blush yells that she'd misunderstood. "Never mind them. Why did you go to Headquarters and get sick? What did you do when you got back? What did you eat? What did you drink?"

Head bowed, hands pressed to her eyes, she stands for a long moment, likely thinking back to when her life was private and made sense.

x

"I got up, showered, ate breakfast, took my pills..."

"What breakfast? What pills?"

"I had... I had... I had..." she looks up, "scrambled eggs and sausage; frozen food. Juice. Protein drink."

"The seals were intact on the food?" She nods. "What about the juice? The drink?"

Breaking away, she walks out and Kensi follows. She doesn't turn to where Deeks has started in the far left corner, putting things into some semblance of order, she goes directly to the destroyed kitchen. Everything in it is thrown around, pots and pans, silverware and cups thrown to the floor.

'At least the fridge is closed,' Kensi thinks, and only cans and boxes from the cupboard are on the floor. Putting this apartment back in order isn't going to be a project, it'll be an Operation.

She already has her list of Volunteers whom she'll Draft for the weekend.

x

Nell roots through the garbage pail beside the stove, takes out a clear plastic bottle of orange juice and sets it on the table. She digs further mid-way down, brings out singly four small plastic bottles of chocolate protein drink and puts them beside the juice bottle. There's not very much more in the container other than frozen food boxes and trays.

At least CSU didn't dump this (she hopes), so it's reasonable that the deeper she goes, the older the refuse.

"Did you take the garbage down yet?"

"No," she admits, looking slightly embarrassed. It'd been a week. "I couldn't hold anything in, not even the OJ or drink, so I didn't try, so I didn't eat. Since I got better, well, I'm not much of an eater."

Of that, she has little doubt about the slim woman. "What else?" Kensi asks, building the flat box into a container that will hold, with careful packing, everything that must be shipped to DC's Forensic Scientist. There's already a set of Evidence Bags in various sizes in the box. She'd prepared it before leaving HQ.

"That's all. I was so sick that for two days I couldn't keep anything down. I took my vitamins and my..." She casts and embarrassed glance to the door. Deeks is in the living room working to put it back together while undoubtedly inspecting it for whatever CSU missed, so she drops her voice. "Pill."

"Get them," Kensi says, sympathizing with the woman. She'd been violated during that undercover Op she should never have been on, violated again by this accusation, violated yet again by the CSU and Uniforms and undoubtedly feels more so by the possibility that Deeks might hear what's not his business. Deeks when he's not actively behaving himself is wildly inappropriate and she's not sure how long today's good behavior will last.

Nell leads her back to the bedroom, but she must search on her bureau, then the floor of the devastated room before she finds both, one vitamins, the other a flat blister strip with several pills already pressed out. She deposits each into small bags Kensi carries, searches a wastebasket below her desk and pulls out a fully expended strip and this also goes into a bag and the box. Kensi labels each but Nell avoids looking at the pills and Kensi can virtually read her thoughts. 'If she doesn't see it, I won't either.' It's not silly, it's one more violation.

x

"What else?"

Nell shakes her head, tries to review everything that had happened while she was too sick to care. "Oh." She leaves, enters the bathroom and from the hamper beside the sink digs out a the upper half of a pair of floral print pajamas. She pulls at the left sleeve and Kensi sees a dried pink stain on the forearm. "I was so sick I spilled the bottle, and didn't want to ruin a towel. I just wiped up the spill and tossed the top in." Kensi opens a large plastic bag and she pushes the garment in.

She has already seen an almost folded pair of light blue pajamas on the floor among the fabric debris in front of the bureau. She also takes as an indication of the woman's fractured mind that this reconstruction is far from orderly. Jumping from room to room and back again, she's sure they're going to miss something. "Anything else?"

She shakes her head. "Not that I can think of."

x

"LAPD has a laptop," Kensi says.

She nods. "I took the modem out, no outside connection at all. I use it for my really private stuff so no one can hack me."

"What's on it?"

"Banking, private stuff, work files I need – _Hetty approved them_."

"I'm not saying anything. You have the backup here?"

She nods, breaks a barrier of very evident reluctance and reaches into one of the open bureau drawers, searches in it among the clothes that are left and pulls out a flash drive. Poor Search technique on someone's part, Kensi decides, more mess than yield. She wouldn't have missed a flash drive in searching a computer guru's home for murder clues. Nell holds it out to her. "This is _Private_."

"I'll only share it with Hetty," is the best she can promise.

Nell so clearly doesn't want to say that "I kept my diary there, and when Nate suggested keeping a Journal of my feelings over what happened in May, I kept them there. I ranted, I raved, I blew my top daily. And...

"And I put down every fantasy of everything I was going to do to that _Bastard_ who made me into a Masturbation Cup for him and his Crew! I put down _everything_ , everything he did to me, everything I was going to do to _him_ , _EVERYTHING_!" She kicks the bureau, too hard.

Crying out, she falls onto the overturned mattress, clutches her foot.

Deeks appears at the doorway, having heard the yell, but he says nothing. The agents wait for Nell to recover, then "Let's spread the canvas," Kensi says.

xxx

At the Maryland State Prison for Women Ziva again meets with Dr. Elizabeth McFadden, this time with Tony beside her at the square wooden table. "Wow," the Psychiatrist says, her tone mocking, "twice in one afternoon. Where's little Tim, home consoling the Missuz?"

Ziva tosses the file folder onto the table. "Department of Justice offer. Commutation of your Sentence from Seventy Five Years to 'Time Served', enrollment in the Witness Protection Program – conditional upon your testimony being good. So it is put up or shut out."

She sits down, opens the folder and examines the first few of many pages. "I want my Lawyer to look at these."

"She has already been called." She checks her watch. "She should arrive within a half hour."

"So," she muses, "Agent McGee came through." She looks up. "I must confess I didn't believe him."

"Unlike some people," Ziva bites, "Agent McGee is not a liar."


	9. Mightier than the Sword

Chapter Nine  
Mightier than the Sword

Tony and Ziva wait with fading patience, not wanting to get closer at the too small wooden table in Interview Room #2 while Elizabeth McFadden and her lawyer Helena Ameruso review the terms of the documents. If accepted, and if she cooperates, it will result in the Commutation of McFadden's seventy five year sentence to 'Time Served' plus admission into the Witness Protection Program, meaning a new identity and ongoing government protection.

"Okay," Tony says, "you've spent more time on that than some film crews spend on their scripts."

"Patience, kind sir; we're not doing 'Debbie Does Disneyland'," McFadden teases. This is enough to turn Ameruso to business.

"The offer appears acceptable."

"Contingent upon your client's satisfactory cooperation," Ziva says. She's been taken by DiNozzo's silence. Except for one observation, the man role has been more as an observer than his usual 'out front' participation. "The information she provides must have sufficient value before we proceed with this offer."

"This obscenely generous offer," Tony says.

"You people made it," McFadden says. "I was perfectly content to run my operation here."

"Doctor," Ameruso says. To her it must seem like the Psychiatrist is determined to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

"Oh, I'm very happy to cooperate, now." McFadden leans back in her chair. "What do you want to know?"

x

Ziva is mildly surprised when Tony does not take point on this, so after what she hopes is an unnoticeable pause, she says "The hypnotic Compact Disks that you and Samuel Richards distributed through your Practices to Military Spouses, which programmed them to murder their greatest loves, contained a sub-program which compelled your victims to then kill themselves."

Ziva is happy she does not have to use such legalisms as 'alleged', for those crimes have already been proven and are the reason why McFadden is here where she so greatly deserves to be. She is still aggravated with Tim's ploy that started this abomination of 'Justice' and she intends to make this fact painfully clear to him at her first opportunity.

"Some of my best work. So what?"

"Recently two people who were in the process of being brought in for questioning, though they were not the prime movers in the case, committed suicide rather than answer questions."

"Interesting. Of course I made sure the job was done before my people self-terminated."

"Not in all cases."

"Ah, yes, little Timmy McGee and his priestess. Well, we can't have everything work perfectly all the time, can we?"

"Who provided the Compact Disks you and Richards used?"

McFadden says nothing.

Tony leans forward. "If we walk out that door," he says slowly, pointing behind her, "the deal walks with us."

Another long moment of consideration. "All right, I'll tell you." She takes the papers offering her Commutation and the Protection Program, turns them to herself, and looks to the agents. "Got a pen?"

Tony hands his to her, but he never expected her to slam the implement into her own chest. Before anyone can grab her she turns and, obviously in great pain, leaps from her chair and lands chest first onto the floor.

The calls for Medical Aid are very loud, but volume has no effect upon the minutes it takes for help to arrive.

Too late.

xxx

Abby Sciuto opens the front door of her apartment building and, after getting through the vestibule heat lock, starts up the stairs to her third floor apartment, her focus on Monroe Hospital and Sammy. With every step the heat grows, trapped in the stairwell with her because, as usual, Dennis Cuomo on four keeps securing the trap door at the top of the ladder, trapping every calorie of heat that the day has abused the building with. She wishes he would learn that if it had somewhere to go, the heat would not stay here, greatest on his floor which is why he runs three air conditioners in five windows.

The thought of going the extra flight and then climbing the ladder and unlatching the heavy barrier to move it an inch aside is too much. By the time she reaches the first landing and makes the turn to walk to the next flight of creaking stairs, her black tee shirt with the white rib cage and red heart clings to her ribs and grows moister with every breath.

As she puts her foot on the single platform to start her turn up the flight to her apartment the door to her left opens, but she keeps her groan as quiet as she can. Must be polite.

"Hey, Abb," her seventeen year old neighbor, the kid with the radar ears who always knows when she or Sammy are on the stairs, calls.

She looks. "Hey, Pau– _Jesus, Put Some Clothes On_."

He's standing in the open doorway wearing a pair of red boxers.

"What's wrn, Abb? Ss hot, ain't you?"

"Where are your _parents_?"

"Out. Wanna come in? I cin giv you somt'in'"

He probably thought that sounded suggestive but even if she were dying, the sight of him like this - and he can't claim the apartment is hot, not with his pants on the living room floor behind him half inverted from stepping out of them just beyond the door - is the most offensive turn-off she can imagine. A no-hold-barred date at one of Sammy's favorite Clubs, even if she were the bindee instead of the binder, would be heavenly by comparison.

She longs to blow off a vast amount of steam, and would if she thought he were mentally capable of being corrected by it, but getting upstairs so she can get to Sammy at the hospital is far more important. Ignoring him, eyes forward and up so she can shut him out, she climbs the stairs as quickly as the escalating heat will allow, so glad that despite the oven she's not wearing a skirt, gets her key into her door lock above the idiot's head and opens the portal.

x

**–telling you Who's on First, What's on Second and I Don't Know's on Third.** Bud Abbott, wearing an antique St. Louis Wolves uniform and a very antique mustache, baseball glove in hand, explains to his shorter, stouter partner in front of a baseball diamond backdrop on the plasma screen to her right across the room.

**You know the fellows' names?** Lou Costello, dressed in his regular clothes with signature bowler hat and holding a bat, asks.

**Yes.**

It's who's on the couch at the opposite wall, legs drawn up inside her double-oversized National's tee shirt, that Abby cares about.

**Well then who's playing First?**

**Yes.**

"Oh. Gee. You're home."

**I mean the fella's name on First Base?**

**Who.**

Sammy looks to her. "I'm home," she assures her, her face and voice solemn.

**The guy on First Base.**

**Who is on First.**

**Well what're you askin' me for?**

**I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Who is on First.**

"What are you _doing_ here?" she demands over the ignored routine.

"I checked myself out. I couldn't stand to lay in that room one more second."

"Buuuu..."

"Bill drove me home but I wasn't up to his staying. I just wanted to be alone."

x

**Have you got a First Baseman on First?**

**Certainly.**

**Then who's playing First?**

**Absolutely.**

"I mean why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you call me?" 'And why aren't you hysterical?' is her most urgent thought.

Sammy shrugs, the motion vague within the stretched fabric.

**When you pay off the First Baseman every month, who gets the money?**

**Every dollar of it.** Abby walks closer to where she can watch Sammy's doleful face and also stand in the air conditioner's stream. It'll cool and eventually dry her damp tee shirt but her focus is on the blonde woman. This is one of several versions of this classic routine, and every one of them destroys her friend.

**Well why not? The man's entitled to it.**

**Who is?**

**Yes.**

Something is very wrong; she's inclined to think 'wronger than usual', for not only is Sammy detached from what she's hearing, something she never has been able to endure, but she's positively grave.

**Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.**

**Who's wife?**

**Yes.**

x

The last time Sammy had seen this routine, and Abby can see it's from their DVD, by this point she'd fallen off the couch and lay, helpless with mirth, upon the carpet. Even with her greatest effort she has never fought past Costello's 'I don't even know what I'm talking about!' without being overcome by hysterics. She'd bought the team's Greatest Hits DVD with the hope of hearing their routines through and Abby doubts she's ever managed it.

**What's the guy's name on First Base?**

**What's the guy's name on Second Base.** Sammy turns a little of her attention left to the screen.

**I'm not asking you who's on Second.**

**Who's on First.**

**I don't know.**

Abby, staring at Sammy's solemn face, can stand it no longer.

**He's on Third. We're not talking about him.**

She snatches up the remote control from the couch arm and aims it at the screen.

**How did I get on Third Ba–?**

x

Sammy moves only her eyes to look up at her. "Why did you do that?" she asks so blandly that Abby's lost.

Yet she forces herself. "Honey, what's wrong?" 'Besides _everything_?'

"I'm just not in the mood," is a long sigh.

"I'm sorry," she sits down, uses her left hand to stroke her friend's back, "but you not being in the mood to laugh is like not being in the mood to breathe." ASAP she is going to get on with Michelle and Dr. Grantwood about depression as a symptom but for now Sammy needs her immediate help - if she can figure out how to give it.

Sammy shakes her head. "I don't know." She sighs and Abby's scared. "I tried 'Wonder Man', I even tried Rowan and Martin." Sammy loves the older comedies, they're absolutely clean and far more hilarious than anything in the 21st Century. It was the days before laugh tracks told you when to laugh; you laughed because it was funny. "Kaye was trying to get the DA's attention while absolutely destroying an Opera but I felt nothing, and Rowan and Martin, I didn't even care."

x

Abby continues rubbing her friend's back through the thin, tightly stretched shirt, feeling only a bra strap, no shirt, thinking as quickly as she can. If the various 'Who's on First?' routines, among others, destroy her, leaving her clutching her aching stomach while trying to relearn how to breathe, Danny Kaye's manic ending to 'Wonder Man' while the poor Prima Donna tried to save the day and the prompter ripped his hair out at Kaye's liberties consistently decimates her. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In - and they have the second DVD collection, not coincidentally featuring Danny Kaye, bought for a dollar at a Church flea market, each episode an irreverent, nonsensical smack at everything - always requires long pauses for recovery.

She doesn't want to say 'and you checked yourself out of the hospital?', that being a useless recrimination when her friend really needs her, but it blasts within her skull. She tries to push it aside, or at least to quiet the echoes so she can think of what to do.

x

"One thing you've got to do; you've got to get out of here."

"I don't feel like going anywhere." Abby pinches her back, disengages the bra and the straps fly several inches apart. " _Abby_!"

"Come on, get dressed, we're getting out of here." She stands up, reaches down, grasps her wrist and glances over the black living room with its black shag carpet, black couch, black chairs, black walls, black most things, now even the plasma screen. "Get up and let's go. This place is too grim. I know, I Grimmed it."

She tugs hard enough to stop any protest her friend might make, and when she pulls her up, the stretched sleep tee shirt hanging shapeless from her bared left shoulder, she tugs her toward the coffin room. "Come on, take that thing off. It's Thursday night and we're going Clubbing."

"It's too hot."

"Not yet, but it will be," she promises as she pulls Sky through the short hall and into the rear room.

"Don't feel like Clubbing."

"You will when I get done with you."

x

Though the coffin room is hers and Sammy uses the black leather convertible, their closets are in this room and Abby shamelessly rifles through her friend's, finds the top she's already decided upon. "Come on," she orders, looking back over her shoulder, "get that off."

With a hard sigh Sammy pulls the knee length Nationals shirt up and over her head, lets it drop to the carpet at her bare feet, snatches the two hanging ends of the bra and pulls them behind her back. Abby grabs between the cups even while noticing this is one of hers, yanks the garment off Sammy's chest and arms and completes the motion by flinging it beyond the closed coffin.

" _Hey_."

"Can't wear a bra with this," she declares and hands her a blue cloth polygon, shorter on the upper part, with long blue strings hanging from each corner. The cloth isn't wide enough to reach halfway along her sides.

" _I'm not wearing this outside_."

"Well, topless is an option, goes well with handcuffs, but that only means you'll have to leave the party early." She sees Sammy's ready to give her a fight and gives her her 'you'll do as you're told' face.

"Oh, all _right_."

She ties it firmly, first the two strings behind her neck under her short, pale blonde hair nearly choking her, then yanks the lower strings and secures them behind her back while Abby rummages through the closet and pulls out a scarlet leather miniskirt.

"Oh No." She'd bought it on a dare from her friend Cherry; it's only long enough to hide her crotch by an inch or two and she's only worn it once, that to a 'Meow Mix' party and the fact that only women had been present had not protected her from touches and more, not that she'd minded at all - then. It had accomplished its planned purpose - then. Abby hands it to her and stands with arms folded as she holds the intense red leather to her waist, then to her hips. Yes, the garment hasn't magically elongated since last summer.

"Come on."

"Thank God I don't have any crotchless panties," she mutters as she steps into it.

"I have scissors," earns her a glare.

"You... wouldn't... _Dare_."

x

Abby turns, bends deep into the closet and comes out with a pair of scarlet slippers with four inch heels. "If you're good, some day when you're dressing to go out with Bill, you'll find every pair you own altered."

"I'll cut the cups from every bra _you_ own and ventilate every one of your tee shirts with nice big rectangles."

"Won't stop me from going to work."

Sammy pulls the red shoes on, admitting they're a good match for the half skirt, and stands straight. She has to balance on her toes and is grateful for the built in support. She'd bought these last year, wore them once and then tossed them into the back of the closet. The heels lift her up to five six, still four inches short of Abby's unenhanced height. "There. Satisfied?"

"No." Abby steps behind her and tugs the strangling halter straps loose, first behind Sammy's neck, then those at her back and reties them five inches looser than the snug fit she'd had. She decides to add petulance, perhaps to say childishness, to the list of symptoms she'll discuss with Grantwood and Michelle.

x

When the scientist is done with the bows, she tugs at the loosened material under Sammy's right arm, satisfied by the quality of the peek. All the woman needs tonight is a moment's carelessness. "There," she says, stepping around front.

"You are such a Bitch."

Abby kisses her cheek. "You're welcome."

"Just for this, I'm making sure you have to sleep in your lab tonight."

"Bon appétit."

Abby strips off her damp ribs and heart tee shirt - in the near hundred degree day she hadn't bothered with a bra - and Sammy, with the first hint of her normal manner, says "You know, lately you're really starting to act the Domme." She forces a half smile. "I kinda like it."


	10. I Saw Her Boyfriend

Chapter Ten  
I Saw Her Boyfriend

Nell Jones' building is a four story with two apartments on each floor, the doors of which face one another across the common hall. The five apartments over a large lobby are therefore split between the agents, Marty Deeks drawing the two on the second floor while Kensi, with Nell, begin their sweep on the fourth. Therefore the women conclude their interviews first, and it is while they descend the stairs to the third floor a woman, apparently in her early thirties, steps off the case, coming up.

"Nell? You okay?" She puts the bags she's carrying into her left hand, her right freed to hug. "I saw the Police here, the Super let them in, they put something on your door. What happened? I was worried, I heard you go out this morning and then..." She looks at Kensi, her eyes blazing with suspicion tinged with apprehension. The sticker she'd pointed to had been pasted to the frame and door, earlier cut in half by Deeks.

"Hi, Marianne, I'm fine."

"What's going on? The Police–"

"I'm _fine_."

"But what's happening?"

"Miss?" Kensi says, drawing the woman's attention.

"Oh, hi. I'm Marianne DiSchiavi. I live across the hall."

Kensi is tempted to say 'yes, I'd gathered' but doesn't want to risk another divergence.

"Marianne's a freelance writer."

"Mostly articles for magazines... a lot of magazines, come to that. Nothing glamorous, but it pays the rent and allows me to work from home."

"Marianne, have you noticed anyone trying to get into my apartment when I'm not home?"

She shrugs. "Only one I ever hear coming and going is your boyfriend."

x

"My what friend?" Nell feels a frigid hand grip her heart.

"Well, that's what he introduced himself as the first time I saw him coming out."

 _Out_? "I don't _have_ a boyfriend." Marianne's expression goes from pleasant to fearful as she realizes there's more wrong than she'd realized. She can't know, however, that she'd let an intruder get out and away. "When was this?"

"A couple of times," she says, apprehension rising. "But he said he was your boyfriend and he was here so many times that I–"

 _"How_ many times?"

"Nell," Kensi says and she bites back her fear. Not easy.

"I really screwed up, didn't I?"

"Just tell me."

"Well, the... The first time... well, that had to be a month ago or so. I remember, it was the 16th, the day Vanity Fair–"

"The day before the Hardware store," she reminds Kensi.

In looking to her partner she sees Deeks coming off the stairs and onto the landing. She looks back to her friend, feeling that freezing hand take a firmer grip. "What happened?"

"Hi," Marianne greets Marty, but the distress on Nell's face keeps her focused on her perceived screw up. There's more shame than fear now. "Well, you know I work right by the door," she waves to a spot to the right side of the door behind her. "My workstation's right there because that has the number of plugs I need for all my equipment. Well, I like to keep things quiet so I can concentrate, but the upshot is that I can hear everything, including people coming and going on the stairs.

"I heard your door open and it didn't feel right, because I'd already heard you go to work. It didn't, well, it didn't sound like the way you open and close your door. So I looked through the peephole and this guy had just closed the door and was about to leave. I didn't recognize him so I came out and asked him what he was doing."

"And?" Kensi prompts, thinking that was either very brave or wildly foolish, and considering what this supposed boyfriend did it could well have been the latter.

"Well, he said he was your boyfriend and was going to work. He didn't come right out and _say_ he'd spent the night, but the way he was talking–"

"I don't _have_ a boyfriend! _No one_ spends the night!"

Marianne backs away from the anger and Kensi cuts in quickly.

"Can you describe him?"

Blushing, Marianne tries to get back on track. "I - I guess... Well, he was really tall, really thin. He wore glasses. Had blond hair, kind of short and a bit wavy."

Deeks steps forward, his cell phone in his hand. "Is this him?"

As he passes over the phone, Nell catches a glimpse of the screen, sees herself and Eric posed by the closed front door to Headquarters.

"Wellll... kinda... It looks like him. I guess."

"Nell?"

x

She turns to him. "Eric has only ever been here _once_ , and that was in June. He does _not_ spend the night here."

"I believe you." He looks to Marianne. "You say you've seen him more than once?"

She nods, clearly wanting to be out of this conversation. "Yeah, last week. I saw him twice. I didn't talk to him, I just saw him."

" _WHEN_?" Nell's force drives Marianne a step back.

"Jesus, I'm _sorry._ I screwed up. If I'd any idea..."

"It's all right," Kensi assures her and ignores the denial on her friend's face. "When did you see him?"

"Had to be last Monday."

"The thirtieth?"

"Uh huh. It was late morning," she looks to Nell, "you were already gone and I figured..."

Marty says it instead: "That he'd spent the night again."

"Yeah. Then the most recent time was last Thursday, a little before noon."

"Not since?" Deeks asks.

"No. That was it." She looks to Nell. "I'm sorry, but what was I to think, same guy coming and going?"

"Or at least going," he says.

"It's okay," Nell says.

They can taste the lie, but no one calls her on it.

x

"I thought it was funny that I didn't see him when you were home Tuesday or Wednesday, but then when you left last Thursday morning and he did in the afternoon I just thought he was with you the whole time."

"No," she says sadly, wishing now that she'd had Eric with her, that she hadn't kept him away because she was too sick to see anyone. "No, he wasn't."

She'd gotten up on Thursday and didn't trust her stomach, so she'd had no breakfast, nothing at all, had gone to work and felt better by late morning. She'd thanked God she was over whatever it was.

"Thank you, Miss DiSchiavi," Kensi says. "You've been very helpful."

It does nothing to pick up her spirits. "I'm sorry," she says to Nell, and gets out of the hall and into her apartment quickly.

x

Kensi turns to her partner. "You're seeing this?"

"Like it was on TV. First time 'Eric' comes while she's at work and cases the apartment, decides what he needs. Second time 'Eric' prepares the stuff that'll make her sick, third time he removes the tainted stuff and plants the evidence of the mur–"

" _IT WASN'T ERIC,_ " fills the floor, shoots up and down the stairs to echo over and over through the building until it dies an unlamented death.

"Of course it wasn't," Kensi assures the panting woman, giving herself points for not having been scared off the floor. Beale hasn't missed an hour's work all month and Nell's already said he hadn't gotten close to this building while she was sick.

The man may occasionally wear his heart upon his sleeve, but there's one thing they can rely on: when he's asked to do something, even if it's to stay away, he does it.

"Given a faux Nell in the hardware store and at the suite," Marty says, "who can be surprised at a fake Eric here if he was seen - which he was?"

Nell manages to say in a voice approximating her normal tones "Just so you know."

"We know," Kensi promises. "But that box of evidence has to get to Fed Ex right away if it's going to make it on a Priority Overnight to DC. Then we'll drop you off at the real Eric's."

She had been about to say 'your boyfriend's' and is monumentally glad that she had not.

xx

Nell and Kensi lift the mattress and position it on the bed as they work to restore the room and to select suitable clothing to pack for rooming with Eric, possibly for more than an overnight. Nell tries but is unable to find anything that will help her cope with this day. The violations of her home - at least three before LAPD's today - tear at her. It's one thing to know she has a high risk job just by being with NCIS, another to know that she could be attacked and killed at any moment were someone to learn what she does for a living, desk job though it may normally be, but what Kanyicska and his posse had done to her in DC had left her feeling very vulnerable and yet her apartment had always been a kind of sanctuary, at least in her mind.

Now she's battered again, this time by the fact that she has no sanctuary, no security, no safe place at all; not work, not home, not anywhere except perhaps with Eric and that's going to feel beyond strange.

YES, she's been with him, slept with him at his apartment; she wouldn't need her daily pills if she hadn't, but she's never hid out with him. His apartment had been a delight, not a sanctuary.

She feels worse than vulnerable, she's violated. Her body has been violated over and over, and beyond Nate, who'd worked as a Counselor with her and not as a friend, she hasn't been able to tell anyone about this - certainly not Eric - and now her home has been violated, perhaps not as often but this time she has to leave it devastated if they're going to make the deadline.

The box containing everything bound for DC is on the floor at the foot of the bed while she searches among the rubble of her life for clothes and other minutiae. Deeks had called Federal Express and had gotten the nearest location together with the deadline for early morning delivery. She suspects the guarantee refers to their morning and not Abby Sciuto's, but she grants, in moments when she can look at the day reasonably, that this is the best that can be done.

Damn it.

"Kensi?" The woman turns from her closet. "I'm really sorry."

"For what?"

"Screaming at you two. I don't know what came over me."

"Of course you do."

"Of course I do." She tosses a bra into the suitcase and discovers there are three in there already so she takes two out and puts them back into her drawer, substituting some panties. "I'm so scared. I'm–" She'd nearly said 'raped a hundred times' but that's a secret she'll keep as long as humanly possible, "framed for murder, my apartment is invaded – four times. I can't think."

"We know," Kensi says.

'If only you did know.' "I can't believe I screamed at you."

Kensi smiles. "You can make it up to me by baking me some chocolate and vanilla cupcakes."

Depressed as she is, she can't help but laugh. "Sure."

"If I were going through what you are," Kensi says, "I'd have screamed too."

x

They near the end of packing. "Kensi?"

"Hmmmm?"

"How do we prove I didn't do it?"

"We will."

She sighs, feeling overcome by the world.

"Do you want my advice?"

" _Yes_."

Kensi steps around the bed to her, pulls the long sleep shirt from the suitcase, reopens the second drawer and puts it in, pulls out her read-through-sheer pink baby doll negligée and matching no-thicker-than-steam panties and puts them in.

"When we drop you at Eric's go upstairs, have a long, hot bath, then cuddle with him and have a good cry - and then have him screw you until your hair color changes back."

Nell's mouth falls open, her eyes so wide it hurts. Kensi grins at her and closes the suitcase, but Nell can't stop gaping at the woman.

xxx

Gibbs had thought, when Debra Zapigna had jumped off a roof and Gene Schecter had blown his brains out in a crowded parking lot, that the case had reached its lowest point. He'd been wrong.

When he enters the Visitors' Room with two Womens' Prison guards and turns left toward the Interview Room where prisoners may meet with their Lawyers, he sees Ducky has already finished his work and is coming out of the too crowded small room.

There are fifteen guards plus Warden Gene Halsey in the two rooms. He hadn't looked forward to seeing the bald black man again; one occasion, that being the ongoing battle over a hostage situation the man's own incompetence had set the scene for having been quite enough. It's not that he has any doubt about handling the officious bureaucrat, it's that he's had his full allotment of aggravation for one day.

Of course, it's now evening, he'd been home when he got this call and things cannot get much lower today.

He immediately changes his mind when he sees the expression on the Pathologist's face. Tony and Ziva have followed him from the room, and it's the Senior Field Agent who makes the first report.

"Caught us by surprise, boss. She was dead in less than a minute."

"My fault." He sees the conclusion has surprised his top man.

"Boss? You weren't even here."

"Assassins programmed to hit their targets and then take themselves out, others kill themselves before they can be questioned, and it never occurred to me the programmers would be programmed."

"I am not convinced," Ziva says, "that she was aware of the programming."

Tony agrees. "She kept her tongue through Interrogations, Trial, all the way up to where she decided to reveal who was in charge, then she was done."

x

Gibbs turns to the smaller man. "So far as I can tell here," Ducky says, "the pen pierced her heart and she bled out in under a minute. The force of her landing on the floor drove the pen in flush with her chest. I will, of course, be able to tell you more in the morning."

There being no doubt about the Cause or Manner of Death, or the Time for that matter, he feels no urgency in starting an Autopsy tonight.

x

"Where's the Lawyer?"

"Giving her statement to the Prison officials. We already took it."

"Well, yeah, DiNozzo, you were right there." And he's further annoyed that the entire McFadden matter has been so much trouble today; first McGee's bonehead stunt, now this.

He's glad he'd sent McGee home. Even with the Lawyer as a witness to the suicide, he doesn't need the complication of an agent in that room who has an often declared motive for wanting that woman dead.

He sees Gene Halsey approach from the far side of the room like a thunderhead.

x

"I don't like it that every time NCIS shows up here somebody dies."

"I'll add it to the list." The last time had also been after a death.

"McFadden's dead, stabbed right in front of her lawyer and two of your agents. What are you going to do about it?"

He gives the man a token shrug. "She's dead, nothing much I can do. The Agency Witch took a Personal day."

The blank look doesn't last long. Anger chases it away. "I mean how long are you people going to clutter up my Investigation?"

"Only so long as it takes to find out who visited her."

"Your people."

"Since she got here."

"Why?"

"Anyone give her a CD?"

For a moment it's a staring contest, then Halsey says "Check with Admissions," and stalks out.

DiNozzo is only one of several people happy to see him go. "He's had a full head of steam since he got here." Gibbs doesn't bother to answer. "You think the programming's recent?"

"No, I think she and Richards got their downloads before anyone else, but we still don't have a trail."

"Well, we knew we wouldn't get much off Halsey. He's gonna fight us every step of the way."

"He wants a pissing match? Fine with me;" he heads for the crime scene, "I haven't hit the Head since my fifth coffee."


	11. Sick and Scienced

Chapter Eleven  
Sick and Scienced

Friday dawn follows its usual summer pattern of starting out hot and promising an oven to come when the world comes on for Nell Jones. She's slow in realizing the differences; she's laying on her side instead of on her back, the firmer bed, the light dimmer than the six am sun that wakes her every morning in summer by shining in her eyes, the upper arm that pillows her neck while another is draped across her back and the front of her body is warm along another.

And this is not Dearborn Ave, it's Wall and 49th.

And she's naked.

x

She opens her eyes to the face that's so very close to hers and enjoys the smile that greets her.

"Good morning, Ununoctium," Eric Beale whispers.

She smiles, grateful for the welcome and reminder. And he's naked too. Too warm even for a thin covering and the light is very good. "Good morning, Wolfram."

She's called him that on many occasions, the first having been during their first Field Day when they'd broken into Atama (joke of a) Security Company. Wolfram is #74 on the Periodic Table of Elements, though it's more widely known by its modern name Tungsten. It's his favorite Element because it has the highest tensile strength and greatest melting point of any other metal, which is undoubtedly why he chose it as a reflection of his self image.

She's kept up the references for exactly that reason.

He uses her favorite choice, Ununoctium, #118, for pretty much the same reason. It is, after all, a Noble gas, and if the seventh son of a seventh son is supposedly significant, she's the last daughter of the Seventh Period.

Beyond his head her gaze touches upon the top shelf across the room, the only one with enough room. Irony of ironies, though the many shelves are crowded with such collectibles, her eyes fall upon the gifts she'd brought home from Washington for him: 8 inch tall poseable figures of Doctor Strange, Nightcrawler, Professor X, the Hulk - both Gray and Green - Deathlock, War Machine, Bullseye and of course a 16 inch Galactus in their midst. She'd won them at an auction with money supplied by Gregor Kanyicska for her 'services', he'd been thrilled, and she tries to focus on those moments of happiness.

x

"Did you sleep well?" he asks.

She moves against him, saying without saying 'how could I not sleep well with you?' But she won't say it. But just moving her naked body against his and finding him still not hard - God, what control - assures her she can trust him. It feels so good, so comforting, to know she can be here, in his arms, and be safe, secure, that he won't press her for sex when what she needs is the comfort of his body.

And if his eyes do occasionally keep dipping low she certainly won't complain.

"The Best. I was so connieweaves I couldn't have kept my eyes open for one more second."

"I'm glad I could give you a good night," he assures her, his tone very intimate, "after the day you had."

"I–" is all it takes for the idyllic moment to shatter as memories batter her with a steel club, pulverize her without mercy. Arrest, handcuffs, interrogation, accusations, photos; lawyer, hearing, her life torn open, her apartment destroyed; Kensi's shocking advice, the difficult moments when she tried to tell Eric the avalanche of things that beat at her, the long bath, the longer cry...

Before it had closed they'd gone to a Convenience store and she'd bought a bottle of dye in as close to her natural auburn as she could find. It only took an hour and now the last remnant of those horrible days is gone from her head.

Then the wordless agreement that wound them together in the bed, no blanket in the summer heat, just holding one another.

Okay, she'd done everything Kensi had advised, too sick in spirit to do anything else. Well, everything except that last advice; her hair was changed but not the way she'd suggested.

And bless him, Eric hadn't even needed to be asked, nor had he said a word about the departure of his erotic image, but had helped her.

He'd held her while she wept until she lay utterly exhausted, close in his embrace as tears gave way to dreamless sleep.

At least she hopes it was dreamless, for if she'd retained anything that had probably tortured her through the night, she doubts she could stand it.

x

Bless Eric, he'd tried with the costume and the hair color to emphasize the good, and had this nightmare not happened he would have succeeded. The fact that he liked her as a true redhead had been the deciding factor for her - the only deciding factor - that had made her keep the color for this long. Now the last of Betty Willoughby is well and truly washed away.

But in all that, she can't help but think of what she might also have lost. She hadn't liked the red, and soon her hair will grow back to natural, but he'd liked it, and he'd tried to help her find some good.

What has she taken from him which he won't speak about?

x

"Are you okay, Rockstar?"

She sighs; not even the pet name nor feeling his body against hers diminish her depression. "Eric, if I said I want to lie here like this all day, would you?"

"In a heartbeat." He kisses her, and she's so grateful there's nothing of lust in it. They're laying uncovered because the breeze through the open window behind her is already warm but not hot enough for the AC and all he does is kiss her. Just a touch of lips. He doesn't touch her more than to hold her, their bodies together and it's just a touch of lips, no passion, no demands, no expectations...

They'd shared their first kiss under a mistletoe years ago, and _what_ that had started.

"I love you," is all she can whisper against his lips.

xxx

"Whoaaaa, Nellie," is how Marty Deeks announces her arrival in the bullpen at oh-eight hundred, pulling all eyes to her. "Old School Nell is back."

"I'm back," she agrees, unsure if a different hair color justifies this welcome. As usual, her pixie length hair flips outward above her shoulders but she's back to 'normal'. But Today she's making a Statement, and it's expressed in her red sleeveless blouse over scarlet skirt and red high heels. She hasn't quite decided exactly what statement she's making, but she's making it.

Eric continues up the stairs, having already told her before they'd left his car that he wants to check the ongoing progress of their computer searches and in particular their best results.

"I see you took my advice?" Kensi says with enough lilt to show the significance of the question, but she shakes her head.

"Not literally, no."

"Time enough," she predicts.

None of the men follow this, for which she's immensely grateful.

But it has been a good morning. They'd conserved water in the shower, or at least had tried to; that had been their intention but they'd probably used more water their way.

And red is a provocative color so maybe that's the statement she's making – to Eric. Last night, this morning, she couldn't, not even wet in the shower with his soapy hands all over her and she straining upward for his kisses but as Kensi says, 'time enough'.

They'd found something hopeful last evening in their sub-Internet search, not quite as deep as the Dark Web but still very useful, but there's time enough for this too - when Eric's ready.

She wishes she could keep the feeling of this morning, but now that she's here she can't stay in an idyllic fugue in which she's not wanted for the murder she'd so passionately longed to commit.

x

Hetty is crossing the room to them and she focuses on as succinct and unemotional a report as she can give. She's sure the woman knows everything from Deeks and Blye's accounts of what happened at her home, particularly with Marianne DiSchiavi, so there's little that can be told that wouldn't be repetition. What the Operations Manager has to share is more interesting.

"Abby Sciuto called a few moments ago; it's eleven hundred DC time and her report is being routed from her laboratory through their MTAC system. She should be ready for us momentarily."

How? Wasn't it just a few hours since evening?

"Let's go see what she has," Callen says, his words galvanizing the six. The scientist's report will not, they know, be earth shattering; the men and women pray for early miracles without expecting them - what time did she get the Evidence? - but anything that can add to the store of knowledge will be welcome.

xx

"I have her," Eric announces as the group enters the room. Nell stops before the large screen instead of proceeding to her station.

"Do not keep us in suspense, Mr. Beale," Hetty directs. She sees Nell take and hold a deep breath and wishes she wouldn't.

The screen alights to a bright background that screams 'Science', against which the woman in the long white lab coat over black tee shirt with two lines of small white lettering, the lower line smaller, her pale face framed by paired black pigtails, stands like an angel. Several of the watchers hope she'll fulfill that role.

/Good morning,/ Abby Sciuto says, her buoyant tone raising spirits even without announced cause. She steps closer to the camera until the image extends only from hair down to her black leather belt highlighted with a line of silver metal skulls. The white letters on her black tee shirt, as the white lab coat momentarily spreads, proclaim 'Scientists do it with beakers' and under that, in smaller letters, the words announce 'But Bunson gets me hot' and no one wants to pursue these thoughts.

The collar at her throat and the bands about her wrists are black with sharp silver spikes but the necklace she wears is chain links equally suitable to bikers or to bondage and none of the agents want to pursue that either.

"Good morning, Miss Sciuto," Hetty speaks for her people.

/I was waiting for your super-rush when it came into the local FedEx a little before four, brought it here and dug right into it./ She looks to Nell standing next to Hetty. /I don't know if this is going to be the final nail in proving you didn't do this, but I say you couldn't have. The phrase 'sick as a dog' probably covers how you must have felt./

"You've got that right."

x

/I tested everything you sent, found some really hinky things./

"You worked all night on this?" Hetty asks. Abby had gotten the package about 1:00 am P.T.

/My roommate put a candle in the window./

"I was unaware that is still a standard."

/She's an old fashioned gal,/ Abby says with a smile, as though alluding to a secret that'll stay such. /I found ALP, that's alkaline phosphatase to the non-Chemists, but that'll only tell me things like sex and age and how long ago the samples were deposited and I suspect you'll have those answers before I do. If you don't within two hours, call me back.

/I swabbed the bottles, found traces of Ipecac in your 'Total Balance Women's Vitamins' bottle./ Several of the agents wince at this. /They probably pressed dried Ipecac into pills duplicating yours and replaced them, which is a _major_ task, believe me. Ipecac pills means that they would hit you around half an hour after you took them and probably last for hours instead of the usual minutes./

"I took them just before I left that first morning, then Wednesday morning too."

/With slow dissolution, they'd keep you sick an extra long time./

"You're right. Hours."

/But microscopic traces from the pills got on the inside of the bottle and the mouth from sliding out, those traces were definite. They also replaced your Ortho-Cyclen./

"Birth control pills?" Deeks looks at the young woman beside him, surprised by the selection for tampering. The vitamins he can see but–

" _Yes_ , I'm on the pill. _God._ "

"All right, people," Hetty says, "don't make me clear the room."

/I found the Ipecac tainting every one of the blisters, but a check how the pills were removed led me to believe the same person punctured out all but the last two; those were removed differently./

"I was at the end of that pack, I only had Tuesday and Wednesday to go."

/He must have taken all the others back./

"I never noticed."

/Bet you'll monitor those a lot more closely now./

"Believe it," she declares, fights back what would be a too revealing glance to her right.

x

/But I raised two sets of prints; yours and Kensi Blye's./

"Wait," Kensi protests, "I was wearing latex gloves."

/Layman's fallacy I have a lot of fun with. You need a pair of really good gloves, like dish-washing gloves, if you don't want your fingerprints raised by _me_./

"I'll keep that in mind."

/Unfortunately, the one who did this was wearing almost the right kind of gloves. I got prints, but for shorthand consider them out of focus./

"What about the pills?" Hetty asks. She's not too put out about fingerprints on the packaging, there are plenty that can be obtained out here. The woman on the screen is exceptional, but she's not a miracle worker - though she'll confine that conclusion to herself.

Four a.m. indeed.

/Whoever you're tracking has the resources to duplicate very disparate pills, as well as the packaging for the Ortho./ She holds up the used blister pack of contraceptives and the bottle of vitamins into the camera view. /What was in these two would make you so nauseated you'd likely reach right for the Pepto-Bismol./ She holds up the pink plastic bottle. /That was where they got you. The concentration of Ipecac in the residue I found in this bottle would have you praying to die./

"That about covers my days."

/I found some smeared on the left sleeve of your pajamas./

"I was too sick and spilled it. I wiped it up with my sleeve and tossed the top into the hamper."

/Good thing you didn't do the laundry. The stain was full of Ipecac, along with honey which disguised the taste because Ipecac is really bitter. I recently had to deal with chemical contamination of a bottle of liquor but this is simple by comparison. Someone knew you'd turn to the Pepto, spiked it with fifty times the concentration of what was in the pills. A spoonful of this would–/

"It did," she says, her tone making it clear she doesn't want to think any more about it.

x

Abby holds up two other bottles, one large and clear, the other small white. /Your OJ was also spiked, so were your chocolate protein drinks. They probably used a butterfly syringe to puncture the seals on those. Good thing you put the tamper seal under the caps before throwing them away. The holes in each were too small to let the mixture out; it was too thick. What was left coating the sides tells me the concentration was so high the term 'sadist' springs to mind. There was enough lining on the sides of the OJ to make someone sick just taking that much. They wanted to make sure you _stayed_ sick./

"Bastards."

/Tell me about it. I'm dealing with some real doozies out here./

"I felt better on Thursday, probably because the Pepto was gone and I didn't feel up to taking anything. I didn't eat anything, didn't trust I could hold anything down. I wanted to get out of the apartment before I got sick again. Shows how clearly I was thinking. I showered and came in, mostly because I'd left Eric with two days of working alone."

/Hi, Eric./

"Hi."

"But by mid-morning I felt better and put the whole thing down to a stomach virus."

/You'd have been better off with the virus./

"Amen."

Hetty sees the woman's come to her end. "Thank you, Miss Sciuto. We appreciate all your hard work."

/No problem. I want you to know I did lift DNA from several of the things, but a PCR will take six hours barest minimum, more to get a really decent sample, then I have to separate Nell's from the perp's, but like I tell Gibbs at least once a month 'you can't rush science'. I'll talk to you later./

x

"One final matter before you go."

/Yes?/

"We have received your Challenge."

/Oh heck, I almost forgot about that. Hey, look, if you guys want to skip that with all that's going on I completely–/

"On the contrary, we accept." She enjoys the surprise on the Scientist's face. "With the Children of Deceased Agents Fund as the beneficiary, how could we do otherwise?"

/I'm sorry about that. At the time, stacking the deck had seemed so within the spirit of the challenge./

"Do not be sorry. Yet. There is still the game to play, and overdue humiliation to be doled out."

/Yes!/

"And we accept your generous offer of a Pitcher and Catcher to round out our smaller team."

/Yes. Peggy Uchitel will Catch for you and Fred Higgins will Pitch. I'd asked Siobhan McGee first, but she said she'll bitch to her husband but she won't pitch to him."

"Quite understandable."

"But since the other game was women against men," Deeks asks, "didn't she pitch to him already."

"Regardless, Mr. Deeks, I try not to come between a wife and husband unless absolutely necessary, especially if one is armed with a meter long wooden club and the other is throwing targeted fast balls."

/Very wise./

"I did think so."

"McGee's your Chaplain, isn't she?" Callen asks Abby, getting her acknowledgment. "Well, should be interesting. Don't priests specialize in charity and mercy?"

/You can try your luck. They also specialize in chastisement and admonishment."

"Like I said, interesting."

"But inform your Chaplain, if you please," Hetty says, her tone announcing the end of the necessary diversion, "that she should start praying now, because I have one _hell_ of a Strike Zone."

/I'll tell her./

"Then we shall see you on Labor Day weekend."

"We will destroy you," Deeks declares in a poor imitation of Lieutenant Worf.

/Bring it./

She steps forward until the image is lost in her black tee shirt and then is gone, leaving the Navy, Agency and Marine sigils shining on the screen.


	12. I've Got An Idea

Chapter Twelve  
I've Got An Idea

"'You can't rush science'," Sam says, referring to the Forensic Scientist's final point on their large Ops screen. "Didn't she just do that?"

"Thank God she did," is Kensi's vote. She's ready to put the diversion of the baseball challenge aside and jump back into the fight. When she'd dropped off the box at FedEx, she hadn't expected so much so quickly but the progress has fired her.

Hetty turns to the Computer Team. "Miss Jones, what do you have on the man seen leaving your apartment?"

"We think we found him. That is, Eric found him."

They return to their stations, the five agents ranged behind them.

On Nell's monitor appears a street image, several individuals seen coming and going so she touches the screen to indicate the too small image of their suspect.

"How did you know about this one?" Hetty asks. Nell had been downstairs with the group, so there's no way they could have coordinated on anything. The techs look to each other and every agent reads the word 'busted' in their expressions.

"We... errr..." Nell bites the bullet, "looked before we left this morning."

"I want no details," Hetty declares. "Yet. What did you find out?"

"This is from a traffic cam on the northwest corner of my block, but it doesn't show my apartment building."

"We found this man," Eric says, "who we can't prove came from her place."

"We couldn't find him anywhere prior to my block."

"At least at the time we have him here–" Eric continues.

"Last Thursday at 11:47 after Marianne says she saw him leave–" Nell says.

"But I tracked him along a few blocks–" Eric says, showing several street views on his monitor.

"We nearly lost him–"

"Until three blocks north by northeast–"

"When he stopped at a Convenience Store."

"He used an ATM machine–"

"And I got a clear image," Nell concludes with vast satisfaction, bringing up on her screen a close up from the security camera on the device.

"Wonder _Twins_ , indeed." Callen says. He's heard of actual twins who can consistently complete each other's sentences, but he's experienced it in real life only here with these two.

He still finds it daunting.

"From the ATM we tracked him back again," Eric says.

"Still wrong angle to see a car," Nell adds.

"But in the time between when we lost him and three minutes later seventeen cars came off the street."

No one questions the point of tracking them when the ATM photo will prove more fruitful.

"An ATM Security camera's records, from your apartment," Hetty muses.

Eric looks back. "Um, yes, Ma'am."

"This is something we shall discuss – later."

x

The man on the screen is in his mid-20's, as thin but with slightly darker hair than Eric's, and his glasses are similar in coloring yet different in lens shape.

"Meet your twin, Eric," Sam says.

Eric doesn't look back but glares at the screen as though facing a hated enemy. Perhaps he is. " _Pah_. Doesn't look a bit like me. Jim Palmer in DC looks more like me than this guy does."

He does generally look like him. In fact, it's "Good enough for someone who doesn't know you to give us that description," Sam maintains. "Tall, thin, short hair, glasses, I'd pick you up."

"You're not my type."

Sam looks to his partner and doesn't like the man's grin.

x

"Now that we know who we are looking for," Hetty says, "concentrate your search for our chief suspect Mr. Beale."

This makes him whirl. "Hey, wait a minute, I wasn't even allowed to visit, I didn't go there, I didn't see her for three whole days!"

"Oh dear," she says, not sounding distressed at all, "did I neglect to insert a verbal comma? How fallible of me." But then the humor fades from her eyes. "Find him."

xxx

In the huge Hanger where Dragonfire is being recreated, the three kidnapped scientists, having assigned their watchers/assistants to various complex tasks in the testing of the weapon's systems, huddle at the main control board. Their clothes, under their white lab coats, have grown worn indeed, but their families back at their steel cell fare no better in that regard.

A total lack of privacy in the 30 by 30 steel chamber, with no facilities other than a toilet and a curtainless shower, before which the steel floor slants to a bare drain, have taken their toll on the nine captives.

At least it is unlikely they or their families will have to deal with such things as Stockholm Syndrome. That requires interaction and in the past few days none of their masked captors have said a word to them while those in this modified aircraft hanger do not engage in any conversation other than work. Beyond the name and insanely audacious plans of their chief captor, they know nothing of his plans, intents or reasons.

Neither do they care. All their thoughts upon the matter distill into one intent.

"I tell you we cannot do this," Jeremy Cintron says with quiet fury. "If we can't stop him, we should at least stall the work."

"What do you think we're doing?" Mark Esposito counters, keeping his voice as low.

"Not enough."

"These guys aren't stupid."

"Then we should sabotage the system."

"No," Catherine Bachman whispers. "You know what'll happen. He'll kill our _families_."

"You think we're all not already dead?" Cintron counters. "The minute we're done and they test the thing we become useless except as witnesses against him."

"As long as we're alive," Mark Esposito declares, "there's a chance, no matter how slim."

"A chance for what?"

"To be rescued."

"Mister, you're crazy. We don't know where we are now, we don't know where we're being held, who's going to rescue us?"

"I have to keep faith," Esposito insists.

x

Jeremy hadn't known he was clenching his fists until he realizes how close he is to punching the other man. He forces himself to open his hands. "This thing should never have been built in the first place. I'm talking about the other one. It's

more devastating than a thousand H-bombs. Two can cause destruction on an inconceivable scale. I will not be part of that."

"Even if he kills Rita?"

The black man fights to keep his hands unclenched. Rita Fisher had accepted a date invitation days ago, days of terror she hadn't deserved. None of them do. "She'll understand."

"Think so?" Esposito challenges. "I doubt it."

"Better one die than a billion."

"I refuse to let math decide this."

"Listen," Catherine Bachman hisses, her eyes on the men surrounding them at the various stations in the hanger, "we are not going to sabotage this thing or do anything else that'll get our families killed, not while I'm in charge."

The two men turn on her. "What do you mean 'while you're in charge'?" Cintron demands. "Who the hell says you're in charge?"

"I was ranking officer of the original 'Project Dragonfire'."

"Only on paper," Esposito bites. "The 'ranking officers' are dead from the last attempt to steal Dragonfire, four dead, one busted, but you are not in charge of us here."

x

"Damn Carson to Hell," Cintron growls. "This bastard McGillicuddy may have said he got the plans, killing who knows how many to do it, but we all know it came from Carson's downloads. He was going to get rich. I hope he's dead."

"I don't know," Esposito admits.

"All I know," Bachman grates, "is I am not going to risk my children's lives! They already shot Chloe for nothing!" The rifle bullet went through her side, catching an inch of her flesh but the wound had bled profusely, a frightening attack meant to prove that their captor, Jackson McGillicuddy, is a merciless bastard.

"And what about Jose? I sympathize with your daughter, what about my son?"

"Look," Cintron whispers, "how long is it going to take for nine of us to be missed? They may already be looking for us. If they are, we should step up the stalling, keep telling then the tests aren't good enough, that this or that reading is off, keep sending these people for the wrong parts. If not, then we should find a way to make sure this thing is never used."

"And if this McGillicuddy decides we're not worth the aggravation and–"

" _Szssxt._ " Catherine hisses as a white coated technician across the hanger leaves his station and starts toward them.

xxx

Nell steps to the top of the stairs, inserts her fingertips between her lips and blows a higher pitched whistle than Eric has ever managed. It startles the agents seated at their desks.

"What was that?" Sam asks, covering his left ear.

"The shriek of Victory," she declares.

"Works for me," Callen votes as they head to the stairs with Hetty already leading the way.

Inside the center, Nell pauses at the large screen and Eric directs to it the images of the man they hunt, both the ATM security record and a California Driver's License plus what appears to be several street surveillance photos. There's also a disturbing number of video boxes whose images have been smudged for the display.

"Meet porn video actor Larry Phallas–"

"You're kidding," Callen challenges her.

"I wish I were, but he's used the name since making his career in porn films. It's not his real name, but however he's known he's still a dic–"

"We get the point, Miss Jones."

"See what kind of a career you passed up, Eric?" Sam says.

Beale reaches for a fiery retort but Nell assures the large man that "He's much better in personal performances."

By tacit agreement the divergence ends there.

x

"What about Phallus?" Deeks asks in an effort to move away.

"Phallas with an 'a'," Nell continues as a montage of LAPD documents overflow the screen to the point where they start dropping off the screen in a virtual avalanche to be replaced by others, "has been arrested for a collection of petite crimes under his real name Brooks as well as Phallas."

"I totaled up his crimes," Eric says, "and most of them were petty, misdemeanors and violations. He should have gone to jail for upwards of ninety seven years but didn't."

"How'd he get off?" is what Callen wants to know.

Deeks reminds him that "He did a lot of porn," which earns him an arm punch from Kensi.

"I mean what kind of Lawyer did he have?"

"A good one," Eric says, "on Retainer with the studio, but on the whole the studio kept paying off the fines. It's one of the places we ID' as being one of Kanyicska's subsidiaries."

"Like the strip club we've already discussed too much," Nell says with a pronounced bite, "he liked his Holdings to keep a low profile, because he uses them for his business meetings."

"It's obvious," Hetty says, "that Mr. Phallas' public persona extends to more than film making."

"Would that be public or pub–?"

"Say it and die, Deeks," Kensi snaps.

"Just trying to lighten the mood."

"Well," Kensi says, "if he did work for Kanyicska, he bit the hand that fed him."

Callen turns to Nell. "Okay, he was in your apartment at least three times. The first was a month ago, July sixteenth, when he cased it to find out the most likely things to spike with the Ipecac."

"He probably took the hairs from your brush then," Deeks says. "I liked it that they found six hairs in the skullcap of that wig and every one of them had roots, therefore DNA."

"That was most careless of him, Mr. Deeks," Hetty says.

"Can't expect a guy who makes his living with his shwang to be smart."

"I am forced to wonder why this distinct stretch of the Laws of Chance did not raise red flags among your colleagues."

"It's been worrying me too."

"Devote attention to it."

x

"The second time," Kensi says, trying to keep on track because she's just heard a very large and unpleasant chore for herself and her partner coming over the horizon, "was last Monday the thirtieth when he substituted the Ipecac pills and the spiked drinks for your stuff. He'd have left the Flex-Seal there."

"I bought it to fix a leaking pipe a couple of months ago and then left it under the sink."

"It would have been smart to leave it alone rather than risk his or the killer's fingerprints getting on it or messing yours up. We already know that a can was bought from the Hardware store on the seventeenth, likely a prop."

"Then," Sam says, "when you forced yourself into work last Thursday, eight days ago now, he went back in, stashed the evidence around your apartment and collected any unused spikes. He had to ignore the things in your garbage because you might have noticed last Thursday when you got home, but you'd have tossed the stuff yourself."

"Except I didn't." Garbage is collected once a week and she'd missed it.

x

"Messers Callen and Hanna, visit Mr. Phallas and see if you can get a rise out of him." Since she doesn't crack a smile no one else dares. "Miss Blye, Mr. Deeks, return with Miss Jones to her apartment and conduct a most thorough search for fingerprints and so forth, anything that we can use to prove that the bugger was there. Mr. Beale, in addition to bringing Miss Berkshire up to date on our findings, I want everything we know about this man on my desk within the hour."

"Deeks," Callen says, "can you get started on those prints?" Unsaid is the rest of what he'd like the man to do. He'd heard a lot about the condition in which Nell's apartment had been left, violation on top of violation. "I need to borrow Kensi for a while."

"Well, remember to give her back. I mean, we work well as a team and it'd really be hard at this late date to break in a new partner, what with all the–"

"I promise," he says to cut off the verbal deluge. "Kens, I've got an idea."

xxx

Jennifer Shepherd's summons of Leroy Jethro Gibbs to her office marks the first time in several occasions when the man cannot bypass Cynthia Sumner at his usual brisk walk. This time, when he opens the outer door, the woman already has the handset to her ear.

"He's here and blowing through," actually halts him for an instant until he resumes his trek with undiminished speed.

"Am I crazy," he asks when the door clicks shut behind him, "or is she getting good?"

"Which question do you want me to answer first?"

"Is this 'Gang up on Gibbs Day'?"

"Same answer to all three." He gives her Stare #3 but she's evidently in too good a mood. Whatever she has, he wants some. "Jarvis called," she says, referring to the Secretary of the Navy. "This Life Source is bigger than we thought. The way I get it from SECNAV this issue deals with National Security on steroids. A lot of people had to be swayed by the fact that the enemy, and I have my suspicions,"

"So do I."

"is ten steps ahead of us. They suborned Project Chief Benes' Assistant with word about Life Source and took him out before we suspected anything was wrong, and knew just who to hit to best hinder our Investigation – and I will not thank God that they missed.

"The Joint Chiefs have met and decided to Read the five of us in. Jarvis will be on line in MTAC in an hour."

"Took long enough. Been a week since Benes."

"I'm impressed it happened before Monday."

x

But then he picks up on Shepherd's words. Yesterday Palmer had taken the afternoon off but today his team is up to full strength so, since there's no chance that Shepherd will exclude herself from this conference, "Who are the five?"

"You, me, CGIS Director Juliana Ryan, Air Force OSI Executive Director Joseph Gittiner and Army CID Commanding General Reginald Donohue. They'll each assign officers to a Joint Task Force under your direction."

"From no one getting to know what's going on to everyone." He can hope Ryan will assign SA Abigail Borin to the task force; he's worked with her as well as Colonel Hollis Mann, in command of the Eastern Seaboard CID, and he knows several Air Force people he can work with, but his team plus three other Agencies?

"There are three ways to do things," he reminds her. "The right way, the wrong way–"

"And the Military way. If the others have to open Life Source, one of their people is going to solve this."

"So as DiNozzo would say, it's Moe, Larry and Curly at the construction site?"

"No. NCIS, meaning you, will have the lead."

"If eight of us are going to work this, I want to pick the team."

"I had a feeling you would. MTAC, one hour."

He turns to leave but "Hey," turns him back.

"Hey?"

"When are you going to RSVP for the Awards Dinner Dance next Saturday?"

"Next Sunday."


	13. Phallas Gets A Rise

Chapter Thirteen  
Phallas Gets A Rise

The three story walk-up had seen better decades before the Great Depression, but after a steady wearing out since the forties, fifty years ago it had started a steep decline. The paint is largely gone from warped surfaces or raised in chips like the bristles of a worn hair brush, and most of the wood that lines the building is an erratic accumulation of cracks and splinters. The lock on the front door is a rusted mass that hasn't admitted a key since Richard Nixon was a Favorite Son.

Sam considers that this is no loss to any tenant, as no thief with a dram of self respect would rob a place that could fall into a cloud of rubble with the next belch of a wino were any not too embarrassed to squat here. As he ascends, having to watch the steps closely by the light of a dim yellowed bulb, the creaks and sags of the stairwell have him about to suggest that he and Callen make the climb separately.

"I thought movie stars were supposed to live in mansions," he says, afraid to speak too loudly, not for fear of being overheard by their target on the second floor through paper thin walls but because over the years he's seen too many films with his kids of loud noises causing avalanches or cave-ins.

"Like Burgoyne?" Callen asks as quietly. "Maybe his movies haven't been selling well."

"How much can you make when your films go for $3.99 from the back of the store?"

They stop before the door with the faded out 2 upon it, and this almost illegible number seen by the dusty 40 watt bulb is the best thing about the warped portal. Sam doesn't know if he should bust the door open or sneeze it down.

His partner, in a display of confidence he considers near foolhardy, raps harder and for longer than he would. They can hear motion through the door, as well as some creaks that make Sam hope their target will survive the trip to the door. "Who's there?" comes through clearly, probably because there's nothing in the way.

"Lawrence Phallas?" Callen asks. "We're from H. Lange Productions. I understand you're looking for work."

"Who?" comes under the weight of suspicion and Sam scores him a point. Casting People don't make personal contact unless they're from Scott Rudin wooing Matthew McConaughey.

"Lange saw one of your films," he says and Sam fights off a wince, "and is interested in talking."

It doesn't take much to interest a hungry bankruptee who's raising rent for sawdust and a bolt high over their heads bangs open. Then another, slightly lower, then a lock turns. Another bolt. The men exchange bemused glances as the sounds work their way down toward the floor.

"Maybe I should've busted it open," Sam says quietly as another lock is turned.

"I don't want to get covered by sawdust," Callen quips as another bolt is thrown.

Ultimately the last barrier, level with their knees, is removed and the door, ill fitted to the frame, pulls open with a bang.

Sam wonders if he owes Eric an apology for having teased him, for the resemblance between the real life Phallas and Beale is superficial; hair short and curled but a shade darker, glasses thicker with differently shaped lenses, face similar but not enough to fool anyone who knows either man, only in that it's thin and angular. So is the body, in fact, which they can see since he's met the potential employers with no shirt, or is that to be put down to genre advertising? The best similarity between the Tech Operator and the Actor is baggy shorts on a thin frame.

x

"Yes?"

In this scene Callen is to play the Businessman, he the Heavy. His thoughts on his abused partner back at HQ, he looks forward to being the Heavy.

"Mr. Phallas?" Callen 'confirms'. "Richard Gordon and Arnon Mirishe, Lange Productions. May we come in?"

"Oh, sure."

The door opens into the kitchen, and this is the first time Sam has ever been in a pre-Depression Era apartment. He's tempted to look for an ice box were he not focused on the man. You never break attention from a suspect. Phallas pulls on a Jenna Jameson tee shirt. The woman wears what she does in her most famed film roles.

Phallas and Callen sit down at a table that Sam would never consider having a meal at. He stands behind the man instead.

"As I was saying," Callen says, "our boss has seen you on film and is very interested in talking to you. There's a project in the works. In fact," he takes his cell phone from his pocket, calls up a picture, "the Leading Lady is already cast." He turns the phone around.

"Oh _Shit_." Phallas is half out of his chair but Sam, who has heard of being slammed so hard that teeth rattle, wants to see if the phrase is true. He doesn't find out, but Phallas' butt does slam onto the seat with satisfying force.

"Okay," Callen says, "you broke into Special Agent Jones' place not once, not twice, but three times. Tell us why, and tell us who."

Sam is so close Phallas looks back and must look way up at him as he looms, mass as ponderous as Jupiter and seeming to exert as much gravitic force.

Phallas gulps, turns forward again and manages to draw on false bravado he'll never win an award for. "I'm not saying a word."

"Sorry to hear that. Guess we're gonna have to take a ride."

Sam yanks him by the shoulders so hard his feet leave the floor, latches handcuffs on him and thumps him back onto the chair. This time he does fancy he hears a slight rattle.

"Don't piss him off. He really likes Nell. I mean he _really_ likes Nell."

Phallas looks back over his shoulder, up higher and Sam, who has never stepped in front of a movie camera, glares down and plays his best role: the big, dangerous, angry black man.

x

"You're an actor," Callen says, regaining his attention. "I like actors. I thought I'd become one once. You know, take on different roles, different personalities, different identities. But the thing about actors is this: sometimes they drop out of the pubic eye, fade away, are never seen again. That is until thirty years later someone runs a 'Where Are They Now?' feature." He leans closer. "They're not going to be able to answer that question."

xxx

In the dimly lit MTAC facility in DC, Jennifer Shepherd and Leroy Jethro Gibbs greet the first of their guests, CGIS Director Juliana Ryan. Gibbs doesn't generally trade upon his official position of Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge (there's no SAIC here at HQ), he's quite content as SSA of the best of the Alpha Shift MCR teams, but in this conference of the Directors with SECNAV, the rank is useful.

"What do you know about this?" Ryan asks her counterpart.

"Far too little, far too late," Shepherd says. "An unknown enemy is way ahead of us on 'Life Source' and, because of Need-to-Know, we have nothing to go on. They've used a drug that attacks the brain to take out the Project Chief and two of my people."

"I'm sorry. I knew about the 'Need-to-Know', so of course I didn't, but not about your people."

Shepherd won't mention that there are no deaths - yet. She knows Julianna will help to the fullest extent of which she's capable, but if the misunderstanding – which she didn't actively create but didn't clarify – will incline the woman more toward determined assistance, she'll take the advantage.

x

Ryan looks to Gibbs. "I'm glad to meet you, despite the circumstances. Agent Borin speaks very highly of you."

"We think well of her too."

"I'll be sure to tell her."

"She'll be useful in this Task Force you people will put together."

"Direct. I like that. I'll see."

The door at the top of the ramp opens to admit a spill of light, drawing eyes to the second escorted guest, a tall man clad in heavily decorated Air Force whites.

xxx

The LA Boat Shed at Marina Del Rey, separated from the main body of the Marina and accessed through a wide parking lot, has definite advantages over Phallas' building, not the least of which being that, though it's over water, it's far more secure. When Callen and Hanna bring the cuffed Beale failed-clone in and thump him down onto a chair the agents know that the real Beale, and most especially Nell, watch. They hope the woman gets some satisfaction from this.

In addition to Ops, this conversation is going out to a special listener.

Callen sits down opposite Phallas while Hanna takes his position behind the man, uncuffs him - a distinct message that they have nothing to fear from him - but then looms over him. "All right," Callen says, "over the past couple of weeks you've broken into Special Agent Jones' apartment at least three times. Why?"

Phallas shakes his head. "I couldn't stop you from bringing me here, but it changes nothing. There or here, I'm not talking to you."

"We know what you did. You've been seen several times. The first time was on the sixteenth, you broke into Jones' apartment, probably took a lot of pictures, took some hairs from her brush. Second time was last Monday, you switched her meds and vitamins, which you knew she'd take, for identical pills. You probably took more hairs from her place. You spiked some things with Ipecac, all of which made her sick last Tuesday morning. Last Thursday you broke in a final time and switched everything back."

"Still not talking."

"We know why you did it."

"Then you're one up on me. I don't know what you're talking about."

x

Callen watches the man intently, even though everything is being recorded for analysis later. That the man is confident, even thinks he's dealing with amateur interrogators, is all in accord with the plan. Callen rather enjoys the sloppy job he's doing. He doesn't get the opportunity often.

"Why did you do it?"

Phallas gives him a slow shrug. "Did nothing."

"We know your connection to Burgoyne."

"Bur whoyne?"

"You probably think you're in his hip pocket, that you did some work for him and so he'll protect you."

"What would I need protection from?"

"But you're wrong. You were useful to him, now that's over. He got what he wanted and doesn't need you. From the moment you were made, you became a liability to him, a loose end to be cut off. He's not going to want you to talk."

"Nothing to talk about. I don't know what _you_ ' _re_ talking about."

"But if you do talk, we can protect you."

"I've got nothing to be protected from. Now, this has been fun, I like the salt air, but I know my rights. You can't question me without reading me my Rights."

"Don't have to read you your Rights. You're not under arrest. This is a friendly chat."

"Well, if I'm not under arrest," he stands up, "chat's over."

He moves away from Sam toward the door and Callen, looking to Sam, spreads his hands in a gesture of defeat and makes sure Phallas sees it.

Sam follows him to the door, they leave together and Callen touches the control of the device in his ear.

"You get all that, Kensi?"

/Clear as crystal./

x

Across the street from the Boat Shed and wide parking lot Kensi Blye, wearing protective ear covers from their indoor pistol range, lies upon the roof of a building, a sniper rifle with a telescopic lens in her hands. The weapon has been specially modified to increase it's public effect. She looks through the scope to the lot and distant building. "I've got him. He just left the Boat Shed. Boy, Sam looks pissed."

/He'll cheer up./

"He's halfway to the end of the dock. I'm ready for when he enters the lot. There are no cars in the closest lane."

/Remember. Miss./

"Callen, you always spoil my fun."

x

She's already aiming at her target, a spot in the cement where the ricochet will head to the left of the shed. Few people are in the lot, leaving and approaching cars, and none of them are in line. She holds her breath until he steps onto the lot and slowly pulls the trigger.

It's well that her ears are protected, for the blast thunders like a cannon's, drives two hundred gulls in the waterway between Shed and the Marina into the blue sky to fill the day with their own screams and scatters dozens of people both in the parking lot on this side and Marina on the other side of the slip. She decides to compliment the one who modified this weapon and, after today, never to use it again.

The bullet hits its target four feet to Phallas' right together with the frightful report. The people on the distant docks and boats, and in the lot, heard the explosion and started running, but only Phallas was treated to the bullet's impact which raises a small cloud of asphalt beside the horrified man. While everyone in sight, over fifty people, duck for cover or run in every possible direction, he's too far from the nearest car and casts about wildly for the source.

But Kensi is out of sight beyond the lot, across the street and high atop the tall building, only an inch of the long weapon in view. She adjusts her aim and the next bullet rides the explosion and raises a cloud inches from his toes.

The second shot is enough to make Phallas turn and run back to the Boat Shed, but the third explosion blasts a hole in the dock six feet in front of the terrified man. He runs faster and the next thunderclap raises a splash in the water to his right.

Sam and Callen are out of the Boat Shed, Sigs in hands, scanning for the source of the attack but they do not fire, simply provide an opening through which Phallas hurtles himself and skids to a stop ten feet into the large room.

Inside they come to either side of the panting man who stands bent, hands on knees.

"You okay?" Callen asks.

Phallas straightens and even Jenna Jameson is trembling. " _OKAY_? NO, I'M NOT OKAY! All right, you want to know what's going on? I'll tell you everything I know!"

xxx

SECNAV is late. The visual call had been scheduled for forty minutes ago but impatience makes it longer for four Agency Heads and one Team Leader whose duties continue in their absences, and socializing must give way to cell phone calls where dozens of subjects are covered with subordinates. The tension mounts as duties press until finally

"Director?" By force of habit three of the five turn to the technician operating the control bank at the left side of the room. He's caught short by the surplus of attention. "Er, I have Secretary Jarvis."

"'Bout time," Air Force OSI Executive Director Joseph Gittiner bites.

"Put him through," Director Shepherd says, turning with her counterparts, and Gibbs, to the huge screen.

Clayton Jarvis' thin and hawkish face appears slightly too close to his own camera so that his graying hair and pointed chin are lost, but then he sits back to a more comfortable view. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm sorry for the delay."

"Not at all, sir," Shepherd says with as much magnanimity as she can manage. Since they're finally going to get answers, she can afford to. "We're anxious to hear what you have on this project."

"I expect so. It wasn't easy to get the unanimous approval to release this information, but the enemy's knowledge of it was the deciding factor.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, 'Project Life Source', after initial theory and research, has been in development for six years and represents a profound revolution. It can operate anywhere in the world and will literally redefine how we work on many levels; Civilian, Militarily and much more. It will render many of our systems and operations obsolete and create new fields of Research, Endeavor and Application. It will redefine Intelligence Gathering, Surveillance, even Search and Rescue. Nothing like this has ever been tried before, nothing like this _could_ ever be tried before, and if it succeeds it will redefine how we, as a Nation, operate both domestically and abroad.

"In essence, the Project is – "

xxx

Lawrence Phallas, heart slowed to normal rhythm and lungs no longer so straining like bellows that Jameson risks hyperventilation, is again in the rear room of the Boat Shed where, unknown to him, he's being filmed in the best performance of his life.

"I meet Mr. Kanyicska two years ago during his visit to the Studio where I work. I didn't know him from Adam, and since then I never see him, but he owns the place so everyone's at their best. He was there for some kind of meeting with the bosses, who take him through on a tour of the set. Like I said, I don't know him but two months ago I get a call, guy told me he's one of Kanyicska's people and has a job for me. Well, word around the Studio is that if Kanyicska wants you to do something, and this was the first for me, the only answer is 'yes, sir' and you do it quick and right.

"Well, I was to meet him at this strip club, Ten's over in South Gate. When I got there these three guys, they meet me and take me into a back room. They has a job for me."

"What did they tell you about the job?" That club was where Nell had initiated her UC Op., the one that had been supposed to last an afternoon.

"I was to go to a certain place where this girl lives. When she leaves for work early in the morning I'm to go in, took pictures of everything, inside and out, use the phone they gave me to tell them the job was done and met them back at the strip joint."

"Just take pictures? That's it?"

"There was one thing they really wanted. Don't know why. They said they wanted some of her hairs, like from her hair brush, to make sure I got ones with the little knobby ends, but not to take too many or it might be noticed. I don't know what to think, maybe one of them had some kind of kink on, but for a thousand bucks to take pictures and collected some hairs I wasn't going to bitch."

'He doesn't bitch about keeping his tenses straight, either,' Callen thinks, but he'd long ago formed his opinion about this actor. "How did you get in?"

"I pick the lock."

"You picked it?"

"I know for years how to do that. It makes it easy to go shopping."

x

Callen doesn't let his thoughts show. "So take pictures, take some hairs."

"They wanted pictures of everything on the phone they give me. Must have taken over two hundred shots."

"And then?"

"On the way out her neighbor across the hall popped out and my heart jumps into my throat, but the guy told me that if I'm caught to say I'm her boyfriend. Seems I look just like the guy."

Callen doesn't have to wonder what the real Eric thinks in hearing this because, while the resemblance is superficial, Phallas doesn't look enough like Beale to anyone who knows him. "And then?"

"I meet the guy at the strip club, gave him the phone and the hairs in that little sandwich bag he gave me and he says 'stick around', that he'll have another job for me in a couple of weeks."

x

"What happened when he called you in?"

"He give me a bottle of pills I was to switch for hers, but I had to use exactly the same number of pills she already had, same with her birth cheat pills. He said I should punch out exactly the same number of pills from the strip and switch my strip for hers. There's only two left on the strip so I punch out all the others and flushed them in the toilet like he tells me to.

"He gave me a bottle of some clear stuff I was to pour into her open drinks in the fridge. He had this other bottle with a needle attached on a tube, one of those really small needles like the doctors gives to babies. I was to squeeze it into things like her health drinks and the like, anything that had a safety strip under the cap. Says I was to make the hole as small as possible, right up on the edge where it wouldn't be seen."

"What then?"

"Then he wanted me to sit on her house. For three days I sit in my car and watched but she never come out. Wednesday afternoon he meets me in the car and gave me a bag of junk, said I was to keep them but not touch them. He said I'm to hang on to them until she come out.

"Then last Thursday morning she did, goes to work and I went back in."

"Then what?"

"I did exactly what he tells me to do. I replace everything I put the stuff in, but if she tossed it I was to leave it, switch everything I could with the exact amount she had left. The stuff in the bag I was to hide all over, to wear gloves, to stick them where no one would find them but spread them out. There was some clothes I stuck down in her dresser, cutters, a crowbar, screwdrivers, gloves, two ropes someone made all black, a whole load of shit.

"I was to take the two pair of gloves in the bag and turn them inside out, rub them up and down her bed to get her DBA all over them, turn them back out and hid them.

"I stashed the stuff in all different places and got out of there."

x

Callen can hardly believe this. The man had had to be coached every step of the way. Even before they had started to talk to him Callen had pegged him as the dullest butter knife in the drawer. DBA is 'doing business as', has nothing to do with biology but he'd given Nell the business. This moron who makes his living with an overused body part had helped to bring down a woman whom Granger had once described as having an IQ higher than the team's collective Credit Scores, a woman who'd been recruited by several Think Tanks before settling on NCIS.

For cosmic wrongness, this is beyond belief.

"And then?"

"Guy met me one last time, at my place. Hands me another thousand and told me to forget everything, don't ask any questions and I'd be fine.

" _Well, I ain't fine_ , someone's _shooting_ at me! Now you said if I tell you all I know you'd protect me. You gotta _protect_ me!"

"Calm down. I know of a place where you'll be safe. We'll take you, and have someone meet you there. He'll protect you until this blows over."

They'll take him to a Safe House where an agent will sit on him until they need him. They certainly will not take him to Headquarters, for that is the one place in the city where he will not be safe.


	14. Changes

Chapter Fourteen  
Changes

Rev. Siobhan McGee examines the spreadsheet on her monitor, contemplating the adjustments to August's budget as Summer vacations drive donations down while the heat drives HVAC charges up. George is out on hospital and shut-in rounds with what she considers somewhat suspicious timing, but she has left him with so many things as her English obligations oblige her to more and more displays of inspired juggling. Her intercom link with Church Secretary Meyers in the front office beeps. "Yes. Ellen?"

/There's a gentleman here to see you./

"Send him back, please."

/I'm sorry, Mother, he says he prefers not to./

"I'll be right out." Curious, but there are people who do not like to visit priests in their offices. Funny, she's never found anything intimidating about the large room, but she's read a lot of eyes in her nearly three years here. She does know two things from the brief conversation; he's not a parishioner or he would have been announced by name, and he's not just a man but a 'gentleman'.

When she leaves the office, turns right and goes up the short corridor to the office on her left, she's surprised to find that he's also Anthony DiNozzo.

x

"Well, to what do I owe the pleasure?" she asks after a 'thank you' nod to Ellen.

"I'm on a detour, needed to see you about something."

"A detour." She offers him a companionable smile. "Does Jethro know?"

"I hope not, but he's Jethro so he probably does."

"Well, if not then your playing hooky will be our little secret. What can I do for you?"

Seeing in his eyes that he'd prefer not to say it in front of Ellen, she backs out of the doorway and they take a step back down the corridor. "You know, Anthony, you're the first one in Enkiss other than Timmy to meet me here," she says, referring to the front office. "I never know when Jethro is coming until he's standing in front of my desk - and he usually startles me by doing so."

"Well, that's Jethro for you. Look, Mother–"

"Siobhan." There's no need for those she works with, most particularly her friends and Timmy's partners, to address her formally all of the time. Of course, she's only a little different in her way, she calls him Anthony. In fact, of all those at Enkiss, she only doesn't use proper names with Abby and, of course, Ducky - though that had required work.

"Siobhan. I know we hit a really rough patch a few months ago, and you did _forgive_ me," he says with a tilt of his head toward the Church and the still used antiquated booths that are a feature of the formerly Roman structure and insisted upon by the older congregants. Their conversation had not been there, it had been in her English office but was just as formal. "But at the moment I really need to know that _you forgive_ me."

"I did and I have, Anthony."

"Tony."

"Tony. In fact, Bridget is here this afternoon, I checked her into the Day Care for this week. Would you like to meet her?"

"I would love to."

"Come."

x

Opposite the office door is the staircase which they descend to what the average parishioner considers the lowest level though they know better. When he'd been down here last, the door across the rightward corridor opened to a Sunday Schoolroom, then the corridor continued right to open to several rooms, turned left while opening to other small rooms, all filled with off-season Church supplies to terminate at the locked door of an Emergency Apartment. The only space in constant use had been the large square room, which he's surprised to find has now been converted into storage for larger Church materials. "Where?" he starts to ask before catching the direction of her look to the room's left wall, a wall he'd been consciously avoiding seeing.

In the first days of the year a decorative arras of the boy Jesus teaching the Rabbis in the Temple had been one of several embroidered heavy drapes highlighting the room, but behind it was a vacant doorway leading down a black staircase to a Chamber of Horrors. Now that and the other arrases are gone and the stairs are well lighted but " _There_?" 'Put children into _That_?' he things, astonishment vying with disgust.

"Come and see." She takes a step forward, turns back and he's sure she can read the horror in his eyes. "In January I couldn't come down even to this level, knowing what was down those stairs. I couldn't, not without suffering the most horrible panic attacks. I couldn't think about _this_ room, let alone those. For weeks I woke up nights in screaming fits, dreaming about what happened down those stairs. The minute Timmy called to tell me it was no longer an active Crime Scene I came down here with a sledgehammer and smashed everything I could smash." She smiles. "It was very therapeutic."

"I guess so."

"When reason set in again I looked around at what was left. I couldn't damage the walls; the place is a 60's bomb shelter designed to stand up to more than a berserk woman. I looked around and saw it was a good space, three rooms off a large central one."

"So you moved the kids down there?"

"After weeks of work." She turns and leads him down the well lit staircase.

'Well, if she can….'

x

They halt inside the large room and he spends quite a few moments taking it in. The last time he'd been there the then-dark stairwell opened into this large room and, opening to the right, beyond a heavy steel door any bomb shelter would be proud of, which he and Gibbs had had to batter with a steel ram, was a flesh-colored room where the woman had been held captive from New Year's to the third; beaten, tortured, raped and sodomized at any time she wasn't unconscious.

During those dreadful days and nights NCIS and every Law Enforcement organization in the city, plus untold numbers of volunteers and a half-berserk Tim McGee, had searched the District and bi-State areas until, to the exclusion of all other possibilities, it was realized she'd never left the Church.

Deprived of the thick glasses she'd needed for so many years before LASIK repairs, her sight restricted to a thick blur, she'd been helpless to defend herself against the brutal assaults of the sadistic, misogynistic monster who'd alternated horrific beatings with the most disgusting sexual perversions. He never wants to know how many times she'd suffered the most loathsome invasions of her body.

When they'd finally found her she'd been Crucified - thank God tied rather than nailed - covered in blood and livid wounds and had had to be carried up on a stretcher from the pit and to the ambulance. Then she'd been hospitalized and spent weeks in physical and psychological therapy.

Her sadistic abuser pinned to a wall, McGee's Sig jammed under the bastard's chin, it was the closest he'd seen his partner come to cold-blooded murder.

And he, he'd been left to talk Tim down when he'd have preferred to step out, not watch and swear to any story his friend would have chosen.

x

"We split the children from Pre-K, K and Post-, gave them paper, crayons and told them to use their imaginations. Artists did the actual work but everyone's designs made it onto the walls."

"So I see."

The main room is where the small desks are lined up into ranks and files facing a desk and whiteboard, but the surrounding steel doors have been replaced by glass, so light shines in and out. The forward room, obviously filled with the Kindergarten children, is lined with forests, fields and flowers while the Pre-K room at the left he can see is filled with stylized, fanciful clouds, several suns with faces, singing trees and furry animals and set with everything the youngest could hope for.

Siobhan points to the right, "Bridget's in there."

"That's..."

"Yes, it was."

x

When last he had seen it, it had been a flesh colored vacant space her assail - her _rapist_ \- could hide in plain sight of the woman so when she awoke from the most recent beating she never knew, legally blind as she was, if she was alone or in danger of more rapes. Blended into the fog that was the best of her vision, he could assault her from a foot away and she had been helpless. The chamber's only other occupant was Christa Alvarez's skeleton beside the steel door, and that she had only found by touch during her first perimeter search of her prison.

The children he sees through the glass door he presumes to be about five to seven, but the walls of the big room are a splash of psychedelic colors and intermingled shapes; reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and he can find no straight line at all. He hasn't seen such a mind-boggling blast of color, not a scheme but more a conspiracy, since the 60's other than in an Austin Powers flick.

"You'll never lose anyone against that background," he s says, impressed, "though it'll probably blow your mind."

"That was the only room I put any input into, and all I said was that I wanted to see bright, cheery colors."

"Well, you may have _asked_ for bright and cheery, what you _got_ was blinding and maniacal."

"I'd never have that room any other way."

x

She steps left to the front of this room and leans upon the front of the teacher's desk opposite the 'Laugh-In' set. "And now, Anthony DiNozzo, before they come out for their break, how about you tell me what's really bothering you?"

"How did you know something's...? Of course."

"Even if I couldn't see it myself, Timmy told me last evening that you're not yourself. In fact, he doesn't know who you are and, seeing you now, I'm not so sure either. The very first thing you did upstairs was to apologize, again, for something we'd pretty much made our peace over, and being down here has set off some interesting responses. Don't forget, I had a week on that ship to observe all sides of Anthony DiNozzo, the vacation side, the boyfriend side and the agent side and, to paraphrase one of my favorite authors, you're about forty thousand light years from base and ninety degrees off the beam."

He steps to the desk, leans beside her facing the psychedelic explosion and perhaps ten boys and girls. "Something has happened, something really unexpected, and there's not many people I can talk to about it, not and keep it secret until the right time. But I figure you're a woman who keeps a lot of secrets."

"Several thousand," she admits.

"Well, here's a doozie for you."

"From your mouth to God's ear, without me in the way."

"On Monday the Director came to me with an Assignment. Long term. _Really_ long term. Way she put it was that the assignment that led to me meeting Jeanne and everything that came afterwards lasted a couple of months. If I accept this one, and I have to give her an answer by tomorrow 'cause someone has to do it, it'll last more years than that one did months."

"Wow." She gives them both time to digest this. "Are you scared?"

"You know, I'm the quintessential Trained Agent, years in Boston PD, years with NCIS. On Monday, when she proposed it to me, I was intrigued. Tuesday I was excited. Wednesday I was reevaluating my life, my career, when I talked to Jeanne and suddenly it's on the table; she's leaving Monroe, leaving DC and moving to Florida - and our talk brought up things I did not expect to think about. But she's giving Notice on Monday. Yesterday I'm dealing with that, a new case, what happened to Palmer and Sky and Benes and Zapigna and Schecter and McFadden and now today I'm moving closer to the deadline for 'Yes or No'.

"And I'm scared out of my ever loving mind."

"Jeanne is a stable element for you, someone you depend upon when Enkiss pulls the world out from under you."

"Right, but this challenge, this change in life, had unexpected ramifications because, if I say 'yes', it'll have its effect upon her too.

"Ironic, isn't it, that we met because of one long term assignment and now, because of another long term assignment–"

" _AUNT SIOBHAN_!" blasts through the room, a deafening screech as the glass door before them flies open and a meteor storm of children is led by one dashing comet.

x

Siobhan barely has time to move from the desk and upright before her legs are pinned by steely bands. "I didn't know you'd be down here we're having such fun Miss Wendy's teaching us songs and games and we're going into the garden to see what flowers we know and then we're going to have milk and cookies and watch some cartoons and sing songs and–"

"Bridget." She makes the girl take a breath but all her friends surround them as well (someone knows the priest well enough to scream for her as aunt and this is a whole new level for them). "This is Mr. DiNozzo. He works with your uncle Tim."

"Oh, wow, are you an agent too do you work with Enkissy too can I see your badge uncle Tim has a badge and so does aunt Siobhan she let me wear it once can I see your handcuffs do you have a gun too can I see your gun uncle Tim never lets me see his gun or hold it or even touch it he keeps it locked in this metal box can I see your gun?" and, of course, this starts a clambering from all sides for badge and handcuffs and gun that resists all efforts at control from the priest, agent and the two very embarrassed young women who, a minute ago, had such control over the little darlings.

Finally order, of a sort, is reestablished and the young women hustle the children from the room and up the stairs.

"I am so sorry about that."

"Don't worry." There had been a time, a secret time, when an incident like that would have left him pale, perspiring and shaking, but Chaplain Danielle Burke from the Yard Chapel had been very helpful with how to deal with such things.

"Well, now you've met Bridget, and survived."

How much does she know? No, she can't know anything, that's the nature of the Clergy, even women priests to other women priests. "Your sister Lenore's daughter."

"Yes."

"You're sure she's not Sammy Sky's?"

She thinks about this. "No, I'm actually not."

"Have you introduced them?"

"No - _Freeping_ \- WAY," makes him laugh. She looks to the other glass doors. "You know, the Church is a more appropriate, and safer, venue to continue this." The transition will also give her time to frame her prayer for the Holy Spirit's guidance in his making his decision.

"Amen."


	15. Break

Chapter Fifteen  
Break

Henrietta Lange ascends the stairs to the second level, but the Gym, Firing Range or any other place up here is not of interest. She turns to the end of the corridor and enters Ops through the sliding doors, realizing that for the past two days this large, dim room has been her sole destination.

As she enters, though far along the long room from the scarlet clad Miss Jones, she can virtually feel the young woman's tension batter her like a hurricane's wind or, in accord with today's image, a conflagration.

She's hunched over her station in her sleeveless blouse and every muscle from shoulders downward is a tightly contracted mass. When Hetty comes up behind her she sees Nell's joined hands are raised from her bare elbows upon the desk, a very uncharacteristic posture, and as she watches the screen from beside her fists, her fingers clutch spasmodically between opposite knuckles.

Mr. Beale gives his partner frequent glances, two in the time it took her to cross the room.

To acknowledge she's read this distress would be counterproductive. "How are you, Miss Jones?"

Perhaps to be counterproductive would have been acceptable, for at her first word the woman had nearly leaped from her chair and only her over-wound watch spring muscles had prevented that.

Yet she relaxes into a faux casual mien with impressive speed. "I'm fine, thank you."

She doesn't need the expression on Beale's face. Jones is a well trained Agent with good Undercover skills, such skills as require a superlative actress, yet the lie was hard enough to shake the room.

"Good. I'm glad to see you're handling this difficult situation so well. But if you have some additional time," winding an over-wound watch can, in many cases, cause it to go _sproing_ , "there are several important Projects that have been piling–"

"Hett _y_?" comes out in naked pleading.

"Yes?"

"Do you think I could take a little break?"

"Of _course_. I think we can spare you for a _few_ minutes." Mustn't let the Martinet persona slip too far.

She leaves her chair like a mannequin whose joints aren't properly lubricated.

"Hetty?" Eric says, and when she looks his eyes are locked on his departing partner. They flick back as Nell makes her way past the screen, normally the journey of a second but she must labor at it. "Could I take a break too?"

Since Day One of this pair's partnership she has established many rules, but the one never to be broken on pain of immediate Termination is that this station is never to be vacated when there are Operatives in the Field.

"I don't see why not."

Eric covers the ground faster, but though they go through the sliding door together he doesn't try to touch her.

Sometimes if you even touch an over-wound watch….

She sits down at Nell's station. "Now, let's see if I remember how to work this infernal contraption."

xx

When Nell walks out the door into the parking square and toward the street, it's as hot as she is. The temperature isn't terrible for Southern California but the sun sears her exposed arms and lower legs like an electric blanket set at char broil. She feels an uncomfortable weight at her lower back, reaches back and halts when she touches the grip of her Service Weapon. 'What?' She quickly tugs her red blouse out of her scarlet skirt and drapes it to hide the weapon tucked into the inner skirt holster. 'I thought I….'

What happened? She travels to and from work armed - Regulations - but as a rule she locks the weapon in the Armory before she goes to Ops, except for today. Why? And how did she go all morning without feeling its weight, or so much steel pressed into the small of her back?

That one is easy, she's spent much of the morning perched on the edge of her chair.

Should she go back and lock it away? No, she's outdoors and the Letter of the Law says she's to be armed, but why did she wear the thing all morning among her friends?

No, sometimes it's best not to think too much.

x

She keeps walking. There's a large plaza two blocks away. She can get a table and a … something.

"Are you all right?" comes from next to and above her and she jumps, only manages to not swing her arm at the voice. She looks up and works to keep the irritation from her face. 'Don't notice my weapon, don't notice Eric - am I coming apart at the seams or am I breaking along the long parts?'

There is only one thing she's definitely sure of. "Eric, do you want to hear me Scream? Really scream, really long and loud?"

"Errr, no."

"Then _please_ don't ask me again if I'm all right!" She steps away, walks fast, walks until he, with his longer legs, must hurry to keep up and it's like her mouth is connected to her legs. "I'm raped, I'm humiliated in front of fifteen thousand people - there are a thousand Internet pictures of me - I'm raped again, I'm forced to keep quiet with a DC Agent when I wanted to beg him to save me, I'm raped again, and again and _again_ I'm raped, I get the evidence I had to get and a brainless Judge sets a bail of a dollar and a quarter, my home is violated - _three times_ \- I'm poisoned and I don't even know it because I keep taking the poison hoping it'll make me feel better, I'm sick as a dog for two days, throwing up my guts every ten minutes, I'm arrested - for _Murder_ of someone I desperately wanted to kill, I'm booked - _there are mug shots of me -_ I'm interrogated, my apartment is violated _again_ by people looking to hang me by a rope and throw away the key and the one who violated me came _this close_ to being caught by my idiot neighbor who looks like you in porn films," she whirls on him and screams "SO NO I AM NOT _ALL RIGHT_!"

x

The scream that had turned heads all around them echoes in his ears. He's not sure how to answer that except "Feel better?"

She stands shaking, having to draw air hard. Then he watches the rage, itself a real surprise coming from Nell, fade from her face along with the red blood. She's forcing it down, but eventually she manages to make it go and to sound mostly like herself. "You know," she says, "I do. Thank you, Eric."

"You can scream at me anytime."

He hopes she won't.

x

Nell turns and starts walking again, though this time it's a walk and not a furious charge. She can't believe she'd finally opened up.

Opened up, yeah, right. She'd screamed at her best - her very best - friend and every hurt she'd bottled up for the past ten weeks came blasting out in it.

They'd talked, a lot, since she flew back on June 1st, and he'd been waiting when she'd stepped off the plane seemingly so short a time ago, ten weeks now. It had been her first truly solo Undercover mission. She'd worked for years to get one, confident that she could do it, that she could succeed doing things in her own way rather than copying anything that had been done before.

She recalls her conversation with Hetty over drinks after the Drone case, when she'd told her how, when she finally got a UC case of her own, she was going to do it so differently than anything anyone else had done. That one in May, out of reach of Callen, of Sam, of Deeks, of Kensi, of _Eric_ , she was going to do her way – and she was going to succeed.

It was just an afternoon, anyway. Infiltrate a strip parlor, eavesdrop on a conversation no matter where it was because they couldn't bug the place, get the information they needed and get out at the end of her shift.

No one could have foreseen what a disaster it would become.

She'd been compelled to go with them, to provide entertainment at what turned out to be thousands of miles away and had to be rescued from the most horrific days of her life, a worse fate than she'd ever imagined. She'd imagined things going wrong on an Undercover mission, she'd imagined getting hurt, being beaten, being stabbed, being shot or at least shot at, she'd even forced herself to face the possibility that it could become sexual, for God's sake. Her Cover on that mission had been a Stripper so she had to face it.

She'd thought she'd prepared for everything that could come her way.

She hadn't even been close.

x

Eric looks down to her as they walk and wishes he had some idea of what to say.

They'd talked a lot. He knows so many details of those horrific days. The case had ended on Sunday, May 30th, but she'd moved in with the McGees into a vacated suite through Monday, Memorial Day, but he realizes she's talked more about what she went through in those twenty seconds than in the past sixty odd days.

She'd spoken of having to 'service' those men in the role that had become the blueprint for her days and nights. She'd spoken of what _things_ she'd had to do with fake sighs and fake smiles and fake groans and fake moans but probably very real screams.

She'd spoken of fulfilling the mission, working her way into their confidence, learning the things so desperately needed to save so many lives.

And those lives _had_ been saved. The DC Agents had gotten the uranium, so there were no dirty bombs. They'd gotten the terrorists, they'd gotten the spies, they'd gotten Kanyicska for all the good it had done.

All they hadn't done, all they couldn't do, was save Nell.

But this is the very first time that to him she's come out and finally used the word Rape.

And it was rape, even if not the violent tear clothes off blood and screams rape. Coercion. Forced by her job into a horrible situation so she could save lives; uranium for sale, atomic bombs or worse, but she was raped.

She still hasn't admitted how _many_ violations she'd had to endure, to smile through, and he doesn't know what to say.

He wants to kill those men, had wanted to do it for months, but the DC Agents had beaten him to that. Everyone but Kanyicska had been exterminated, it was insecticide, but Kanyicska had spent nearly three months out of reach.

Thank you, God, he's dead now. Justice has been done. He wishes Nell could have done it. Even if nothing of today's torment would have changed she'd have the satisfaction of having exterminated that cockroach.

x

No, that's wrong. To rid the world of that cancer, to get the real revenge she deserves to get, would destroy more in her, much more, than a death meted out in a two second self-defense act. Bauer had trapped her, boxed her in in the bathroom off Hetty's library; it was him or her and she'd acted before deciding to act. That had wounded something in her but she'd largely recovered.

Cold blooded, premeditated and meticulously planned murder, one lasting at least four minutes before that bastard died, holding him down for four minutes or more while he suffocated, would kill something in her.

But seeing her face as she'd descended the rolling stairs onto the tarmac on that pre-dawn morning, holding her as she'd fought for control, he thinks he could have done it.

x

She'd spoken to Nate Getz. A lot. He knows he'll never know how many times or about what.

He'd spoken to Nate Getz. A lot. He'd sought out the Psychologist in secret to learn what to say, how to help, what to do. He'd had - has - so much anger, so much outrage in him for his dearest friend and he didn't - doesn't - know how to help.

The anger, the hate, had been there first. Together they'd worked through it until he could focus everything, not on revenge, but on how to heal Nell.

Nate's advice had been good. Don't let the anger out around her, she has her limit to deal with. Don't push her to open up or talk, let her decide where, when, how and how much. Be there; don't intrude but be beside her in Ops, their private hours together. Let her know, even without saying it, that he's there and she's safe, protected. Let her exercise her strength, build her confidence, her security. Be a secure rock she can tether to. Be a security blanket she can wrap herself in. Let her talk when she wants, cry when she wants, scream when she wants, _hit_ when she wants if that's what she needs. Just be there, let her feel safe, let her guide her own healing while guiding her through each phase.

Recovery is Phases, Steps, often chaotic, often agonizing. He'd been warned this won't be a fast process any more than it will be an easy one - for either of them. Last night he'd focused on all that, everything in his world being Nell Jones.

Even when they'd wound up together in his bed, naked in his bed, she'd reached out to him for comfort, for security, and he'd set his body on autopilot and she'll never know that he spent the entire time until she fell asleep tracing every circuit in Ops while designing more efficient layouts for every component in the system. Only if she had reached for him, only if she had given him some signal that she wanted it would he have – and she absolutely did not.

His job is to make sure she knows she's not alone, not to let her _be_ alone, while she's finding her way through this nightmare.

But he still doesn't know what to say.

x

He's grateful she's resumed their trek, but an instant later he hates himself for feeling it. He knows it's cowardice, his cowardice, because he knows her well enough to know she's bottling up so much just so she can walk toward and into the plaza.

It's a wide square surrounded by shops and crowded by tables with umbrellas open above them, so many in such a variety of colors that it's like walking into an umbrella farm gone wild for lack of tending.

She angles right toward the fourth shop open to the street, food and drinks of the hot dog and soda variety. He can only follow.

"May I have a large Sweet Tea, very very cold, so cold it's a degree from turning into a block of ice?"

"Sure."

Now Eric's annoyed with a place to aim his anger. The kid didn't look through her red blouse, it's a loose, untucked blouse over scarlet skirt and matching high heels, but he'd tried. In a more generous moment he'd warn the idiot what a bad idea this is before deciding if he'll hit him, but it's more likely that any danger would come from his partner. All he does say to the kid is "me too."

The cups are as cold as Nell had asked for. They're so cold, in fact, that his fingers hurt and he imagines getting frostbite in ninety degrees if he's not careful.

They wend their way through the umbrella farm until he spots a vacant table thirty degrees right and six irregular rows over, touches her bare arm with his warm hand - one scream today is more than enough - and they veer toward it, work their way through the crooked lines.

x

"I'm sorry I screamed at you."

"It's okay."

"No, I've finished your sentences - a few thousand times. I've teased you. I've played with your head. I've never screamed at you until today."

"As Surak said to Spock, 'the cause was more than sufficient. Speak no further of it'."

"You know what makes it worse?" she asks in tones so much like her normal ones as they near the table that he wraps himself in relief.

"What does?"

"Not just being taken down by a fraud, but being taken down by a Grade D porn actor."

She starts to set the cup down but it slips from her near-frozen fingers, misses the table and hits the cement hard enough that the back blast knocks the plastic lid off, spreads a dark splotch five feet wide.

x

Eric watches, afraid to say anything. Normally so cool, in fact he's the excitable one, her hands are clenched so tightly that her nails must hurt her, her face is redder than her blouse and getting darker and her eyes are squeezed as though she never wants to see the world again. As he watches for over half a minute she very gradually relaxes, forces a fake calm to the extent that when she does unclench her eyes and ease her lips she sounds almost normal and her complexion starts to fade. "Oh well, probably too many calories anyway."

She'd sound more normal, he thinks, if she'd take her nails out of her palms. What's the etiquette for if they come away bloody? Should he kiss her palms? Should he pretend he doesn't see?

"Sit down," he says, picking up the cup and putting his own on her side of the table. "I'll get another."

"No, it was my fault. You sit. I'll be right back."

There might be something in the world more stupid than to contradict her at this point, but he can't think of anything.

x

Nell crosses the plaza back to the counter, meets the eyes of the Server and tries to convey the warning not to break the contact as she fakes her pleasant tone. "Could I get another large Sweet Tea? Not so much ice this time?"

"Finished the other already?" His eyes drop well below the collar of her untucked blouse and she's so sorry it was too hot for a bra because he seems to be searching for the little bumps of her areola despite the looseness of her blouse. "You must really be hot."

Under the counter she clenches her fists, not so tightly this time. 'Why, oh _why_ did I wear my weapon today?'

x

She heads back to the umbrella covered table, this time supporting the cup from below, and she's surprised to see Eric seated forward, elbows on the table and face covered by his hands. "Eric?"

"Shoot me," he says with muffled voice. "Please."

'Why does every man want to be or deserve to be shot?' "Why… would I want to do that?"

"I've gotten too old. I've now seen more in life than I ever wanted to."

She sits down opposite him, grateful for the umbrella's shade. "Eric, you're being weird." She takes a sip. "Er." But it's a distraction. She needs a distraction.

He lifts his face from hiding and resets his glasses. "I just saw a girl walk by wearing a tight white Athletic shirt."

Moving only her eyes, she scans the patrons behind him. Such attire would be discreet by comparison. "Congratulations."

"Left side of her left breast, between bra and shirt, is raised by a packaged rolled condom."

She takes another sip to disguise the smile. "I suppose I should be glad you're still here." His expression is a delight. "Eric, my very good friend, as you grow up and go out into the world, you are going to see a lot of things that will shock you." She takes another sip. "And most of them will be feminine."

He frowns. "Wait a second. Are you saying–?"

"I'm trying to say," she sets the cup down, "in a very skewed and awkward compliment, that you spend more time on the Internet, Intranet and Dark Web than any other man on this continent and never go to where you'd recognize Lawrence Phallas and I'm so very, very grateful." She's not sure what to make of his expression. "And this compliment is crashing and burning."

He reaches out and his hands close around hers. "No, it's not."

x

She's quiet, her hands in his, for some time, and he doesn't think this is something that Group Zen - he's not sure if Kensi and Deeks have ever recovered from the last one after the Case of the Spiral Virus - is going to help. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm not thinking." She looks past him into the crowded plaza. "I'm not thinking. I'm shattered into a million pieces. I hurt, I'd feel betrayed but you have to trust someone for them to betray you. They invaded my life and tore it, and me, apart. I'm lost. I'm broken. I want to scream, to cry, to take a sledgehammer and smash every table in this plaza. I want to kill Burgoyne. Kill him. He didn't need to involve me in his whatever, he hurt me because I was a convenient distraction, for no other reason."

She takes a deep draw as though to freeze something in her and he readies himself to give her his cup. "I hate him. I hate him so much. I didn't think I could hate anyone I've never even met but I hate him.

"I want to crawl into a hole and pull it in over me. I'd talked myself out of revenge against Kanyicska because he was out of my reach but I want to _get_ Burgoyne, just..."

She brushes her eyes with her fingertips. "He took so much from me. I was only starting to recover from what Kanyicska did and now it's back a billion times worse and I can't do a thing to him. I want him dead. I want to kill him, to beat his brains in, to–"

x

Lips apart, she fights to say it and nothing comes out. She has killed. Once. It had been forced upon her. Trapped, guns blazing in one of Hetty's homes, it had been her or him - and killing that murderer had devastated her. She'd locked herself in her apartment, huddled on her couch, clutching her pillows with her weapon inches before her, jumping at every sound.

She couldn't stop thinking about that man's parents, how they'd brought him into the world and how she'd been forced to send him out. And every time she thought of him, of them, the knife gouged out another chunk of her soul.

Nate had tried to help, but getting over that moment in time had taken weeks. And now she knows, beyond all doubt, what she'd wanted to believe then, that she cannot kill. Not again.

But she'd been so sure of that when she spoke to Nate, and he in turn had hit her hard. If ever she were in such a situation again, and if she went out of Ops she can't escape the fact that she could be, it's not just her life on the line. She can't just lower her weapon and die, not if she has someone with her whom she has to protect. Her partner...? Eric?

She'd struggled over going out in the field on an UC mission ever again. She'd wanted to, worked to. It was a drive that she couldn't put aside. She needed more than the safety of sitting behind a terminal. She craved more. And when the moment had come, when she was the only one physically capable of doing it, she'd tried to prepare for it, to tell herself she was ready, that even though she was alone she could do it. Kensi couldn't do it, she's not a petite redhead and never will be, so when the time came she'd held her breath and gone in to do what had to be done. One afternoon. Simple. Pretend it was….

It had been a disaster.

x

When Nell looks up and meets his eyes, hers are fragile, vulnerable, and Eric can feel her pain in the stab to his heart. "Eric, would you do something for me?"

"Anything." He'd give her the world, his life, his… everything if she asked for it.

"I need you to do something for me and not ask any questions, not say anything, not try to talk me out of it but help me do it. Will you do that, no questions?"

"Thaaaat's... a tall order." Kill Burgoyne? Gladly. But she'd never ask him to do that. She'd never ask him to kill that bastard.

He doesn't think she would.

"Will you do it?"

He thinks quickly, doesn't want to draw it out. Nell would never ask him... "Yes. Yes, I'll do it. What?"

"I want that costume destroyed."

"The costume?" He wasn't expecting this.

" _Destroyed._ I want it totally destroyed. I want it burned, I want a hammer taken to it, smash it until there's nothing left of it but a lump of metal. I gave it to you two months ago and asked you to destroy it but you didn't. Now I _want_ it done. Will you do it for me this time?"

x

Back in May, during the Memorial Day Weekend, in her persona as the stripper Betty Willoughby, she had been forced to wear a Star Wars VI Return of the Jedi Slave Leia costume at the Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention in DC. The garment was less than what Carrie Fischer had worn on camera, for it lacked the brown covering in the cups of the gold metal filigree bra.

Panties or anything else had been impossible.

When she'd returned, having escaped the Undercover character, she'd given the costume to him and asked him to destroy it. He had not, but had given it back to her in the hope that a symbol of pain and humiliation could be turned around into something that would mean an expression of their love.

And it had worked. The garment had become a signal for a new direction in their relationship, and it had been a good one.

Two Sundays ago, before this nightmare had started, she'd gone to his apartment, stowed her clothes by the ladder in the shaft that leads from the landing to the roof and had met him at his door wearing that costume. She'd spent a full hour 'testing' him. He'd passed with the proverbial flying colors and they'd spent the rest of that night in spectacular celebration.

He'd wanted her to see something good in it, but the bad has overwhelmed his efforts. Now it again represents everything that had brought her suffering and anguish.

"I swear. It's gone. We'll do it tonight. Together."

Relief floods through her. "Thank you."

x

They sit drinking in silence, drinking in the silence while he watches her for several minutes before she looks up, then stares intently at him. "What?"

"What what?"

"You're _smiling_ at me."

He feels the smile slam off his lips. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize."

"If you can think of anything in this mess to smile about, I want it."

"I was remembering our first two weeks together, you suddenly taking over whistle duty, finishing every one of my sentences, you drove me ca-razy. But when you did it to Hetty I was sure I'd never see you again and no one would ever find your body."

They'd worked their way to a solution to that problem, taking turns in explaining the fine points of their discoveries to the other Agents.

"You intimidated me."

"Intimidated?" He certainly hadn't intended to intimidate her. In fact, she'd described her situation as being 'a Type A personality with borderline EDD and Control Issues with men I admire.' But he'd never, ever, wanted her to feel intimidated by him.

"Well, maybe not intimidated, that's the wrong word. You impressed me."

"Impressed?"

"Okay, now you're teasing."

"Is it working?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll keep doing it."

x

"I was working my way in, trying to find my place in the team and to fit into it, and you were - are - brilliant, in command, everything I wanted to be. Plus you were someone I could really look up to. In fact, I had to if I was ever going to talk to you."

He squeezes her hands. "Who would have guessed how well things would turn out?"

"How well. Yes." She finishes the last of her drink, then meets his eyes. "But you still intimidate me."

"Still?" That's awful. He doesn't want that.

"You have your moments. But you _really_ intimidate me ever since I got to know you."

He definitely doesn't want this. He wants…. "Got to know me as in?"

"As innnnn... well, you're so..." her gaze slides down his body until she looks at - looks through - the table top, then she looks back up to him with a smile. "Big."

xxx

"Kensi, can we talk?" Nell asks in the bullpen a half hour after she and Eric returned and relieved, in several senses, Hetty from their station. Callen and Hanna have established Lawrence Phallas in a safe house in Hollywood and are on their way back.

"Of course," the woman says and she leads her to the Armory. She's not sure if she wants a locked room, but if so then that's the best.

Fifteen minutes later Sam and G are heading for their desks, offering Deeks an 'on the fly' report about their prisoner being locked away with Agent Lasko when, from high above, Eric's voice filters down.

"Guys, could I see you up here?"

"What," Sam asks, "no whistle?"

"Nothing to whistle about," is his glum explanation.

"What has happened, Mr. Beale?" Hetty asks as she arrives at the foot of the stairs.

"We only _thought_ the case against Nell was bad, that LAPD couldn't prove she killed Kanyicska. Turns out we were wrong, they do have enough to prove their case. Plus they can prove Premeditation. If she goes to trial with this, a jury would find her Guilty. I can't see–"

"Enough, Mr. Beale. What do they have?"

"Come see."

*/*/*/*/*

Author's Note: For background into what had happened to Nell and Eric, see the October 2014 NCIS:LA episodes 'Praesidium' and 'The Third Choir' and my stories 'The Supervillain Affair', 'Princess Nell' and 'To Serve All My Days'.


	16. Bertillon

Chapter Sixteen  
Bertillon

When Lange, Callen, Hanna and Deeks arrive in Ops in response to Eric's glum summons, the Tech Operator is already back at his station and his manner raises even greater stress. "What do you have, Mr. Beale?" Hetty asks.

"I've been reading the copy of what Nell wrote about Kanyicska on her laptop, from that flash drive Kensi downloaded at the Station House."

"What about it?"

"Remember – well you may not remember – Nate Getz told Nell to put her feelings down, that writing what she felt and thought could both be cathartic and help put her thoughts in order? Well, she put them into her diary and–"

" _You're Reading My Diary_?" blasts from the sliding door and the five turn to where Nell and Kensi have entered, Nell bearing down on her partner who has no place to hide, her face darkening to a good match for her sleeveless red blouse. She'd said earlier how one cannot be betrayed by someone she doesn't trust but can be betrayed only by a friend.

Sam sums up the situation with "Uh oh."

She halts, not quite to the gathered agents and looks back, her glare hot enough to sear Kensi, who had promised to keep the backups of her diary and other personal files from her apartment private but

"This is from the LAPD's flash drive," Hetty says in tones that silence her rage.

"That's right," Eric says, relieved at having his doom canceled. But seeing Nell's eyes as she turns back to him makes him think it might not be canceled, only postponed until there are no witnesses.

"Okay," Nell declares with a hard double hand chop, "to prevent _everything_ being revealed, my diary was very cathartic. I was really pissed at what they made me do and very, very, _very_ explicit in my revenge fantasies."

"And now LAPD knows every one of them," Kensi says. She'd just made some progress in dealing with the woman's emotional chaos, now she sees her efforts set back.

"Any of that involve smothering?" Deeks asks.

"I wasn't that gentle."

"Okay, Eric," Callen says as they step behind him, "what did you find?"

"That one of the times the file was accessed, along with many other things in the 'Documents' directory, was when Phallas was in her apartment the first time last month and she was here, and everything was copied."

Callen says "Burgoyne's people knew everything you thought."

Nell turns from them, hides her face. She _never_ wants to show it again. LAPD has all her private thoughts. Her team mates have all her private dreams. _Eric_ has all her Private _Fantasies_. Her new ENEMIES have all her Private–! "I didn't write about smothering him," she says through her hands, searching for some tiny bit of good.

"Actually, you did," Eric says, regret heavy in his tone.

x

"WHAT?" She rushes to the screen.

"Not with Flex-Seal, you use a plastic–" She grips his arm, pushes him aside so she can read as he stops the sudden roll. For a moment the entire room seems to hold its breath but

"I DIDN'T WRITE THIS!"

"We know you did not," Hetty assures her.

"But unfortunately," Deeks counters, "LAPD thinks you did."

"DAMN IT!" startles the agents who know her so well. "They're gonna use this to put a noose around my neck!"

"Then our strike must be preemptive. Mr. Beale, have you a way to prove that this is, in fact, a forgery?"

"Yes."

" _Yes_?" from Nell comes an octave high.

"I checked the File History. After the initial download, some of the times some files were changed you were here, one of the times the Diary file was modified was when you were sick, but you told me you didn't write in your diary, so I checked more closely. The modifications were made on a computer with a different IP address."

"They copied it. That _Bastard_ downloaded my computer and someone faked an entry, then uploaded it back to me!"

Callen keeps his tongue with great difficulty. Phallas had not mentioned the computer, but they're going to speak again in far greater detail. He's also going to have to rethink the bastard's IQ.

"The Police will use this to prove Premeditation," Kensi says, unknowingly echoing Eric's prediction.

"We need to get ahead of this," Hetty says, turning to the senior Agent. "Where is Miss Berkshire?"

"She's due here in a half hour to go over what we know so far."

"Speed her up, Mr. Callen."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo, for the moment alone with McGee, turns right. "Hey, McNoodle, I was thinking–"

"Could be dangerous."

"Tell me about it. I was thinking could you hide something, like a whole ton of somethings, on a computer, and hide them so well you could never find them?" He doesn't flinch under that look. "It's a complement, McTron. I figure if you can't keep the MCP secret then it can't be done."

"Thanks, Tony."

DiNozzo waits while he creates, and rejects, versions of the perfect plan. "Well, first thing I'd do is partition a hidden hard drive–"

"Hidden drive? Come on, McPlebe, a Private Vault? That's High School 101."

"If you'll let me finish."

"Okay, sorry. Wow me."

"The reason a Private Vault doesn't work is that if you start with, say, a 200 Gig drive and hide 50, the system reports you have a 150 Gig drive. That's what catches the common man, to say nothing of your High School 101er.

"But the way I'd do it is, after encrypting the drive, say 20% of the physical total, with the latest DoD protections, I'd configure the remaining 80% so it would report itself to be 100."

"I see. You wouldn't look for something if your computer is telling you that you already have the whole enchilada."

"Sometimes when you want to beat high tech, the simplest things are the best."

"Sort of like Beary Smiles." The electronic bear toy is so old, so primitive a product, that the DoD doesn't protect against it, which knowledge had led them to the murderer of Captain Thomas Jennings.

"Exactly."

"Can you do it, hide something so well that you, Cyber Crime, even 'Five Fingers Sciuto' couldn't find it?"

"Tall order. I could try."

Tony opens his lower drawer, pulls out a laptop, and carries it over. "Do it."

"Why?"

"I'm trying to hide something from Jeanne." He doesn't like the look. "Okay, I'm trying to hide something from Gibbs."

"I'd believe Jeanne first."

"Me too," he admits, rubbing the phantom pain that appeared at the back of his head. "Okay, I'm developing a theory, but this time I don't want to bring it out until I'm sure it can be done."

"Okay." He takes the machine, sets it down before him and opens his supply drawer for a power cord. "20%?"

"20%."

"I'll let you know."

xx

"Okay, Tony."

"You got it?" He'd had no doubt the man could fulfill his claims, he just hadn't expected it to be done in under eight minutes.

"A full 54 gigs, one fifth your remaining space, partitioned, hidden and ready, with your main drive ready to lie through its electronic teeth."

Tony leans in to keep their conversation private should anyone enter the bullpen. "How do I get to it?"

"I created a macro that'll open the drive, then I hid that macro deep in your Music directory under the name 'Independence Day Main Theme'. The directory even calls it an MP3 file."

"That's good work, Tim." He takes the computer. "I'll put some things on it and see if Abby can find them."

"Anything you add, encrypt with 'African Queen'. Decrypt is 'Casablanca'. Close it out with 'X-Men'."

"Thanks."

xxx

It didn't take as long as some had feared before Lori Berkshire arrived at OSP Headquarters and she and Nell had set up in the Armory where they could discuss her case privately.

In the pen, which is Hetty's occasional name for her Mavericks' base, the four continue their assigned duties of compiling all information available on Richard Burgoyne and his evolving operation, mostly compiled from Deep Web chatter which is far more revealing than the clandestine organizations who depend upon it for their secrecy and anonymity may wish it to be. They're an hour into the compilation when

"Guys, she didn't do it," Eric announces from the top of the stairs.

The men and woman look up, taken by the assurance in his tone, but Sam says: "Eric, you've been saying that right along. I want to say it too. But to say it, we need proof."

"I have proof."

"You can prove it?" Callen challenges. If Beale has proof, he wants it.

"I've proven it."

In the interval, Hetty has reached the foot of the stairs. "Show us, Mr. Beale."

"Come and see."

This summons is far more hopeful than the previous one had been.

x

He turns and heads toward Operations, obliging the agents to follow to where the man seats himself at his station. On the screen before him is a series of images of Nell in Kanyicska's suite, freeze frames showing the moments from the point when the lights had come on and she'd frozen in apprehension until she goes through the bedroom door. The video steps through this sequence over and over again.

In each image her body is covered with a complex web of straight green lines that track every portion of her limbs to every other, stick figures superimposed over her. They move as she does, every motion tracked, the lines lengthening and shortening with every perspective change.

He pushes more buttons and the image changes to the register counter in the Hardware store, a slightly larger image of the woman. This also steps frame by frame, the lengths of each individual green line of the web changing with her movements, but since she is checking out her purchase at the Cashier counter, she is motionless for longer periods.

"I went over the videos and applied Nell's Bertillon Anthropometry figures. They don't match."

"Come again?" Callen says. 'Anthropometry' sounds familiar, but though he sees satisfied comprehension on Hetty's face, he could use more help.

"I have her exact measurements."

"I should think you would," Deeks says. "Thirty–"

"It started there," his cut is sharp, "but then we took off."

x

Hetty steps in, perhaps until Eric can fight through his aggravation. "There are measurements of the human body, Mr. Callen, that do not change after adulthood, and in the 1890's the French Criminologist Alfonse Bertillon applied the science of Anthropometry to Criminal Identification. He made very detailed studies of the measurements of those incarcerated in various jails and found that these, when compiled, provide an excellent way of distinguishing between one prisoner and another."

"Why haven't we heard about this?" Deeks asks her.

"It's archaic, and did not always work. Sometimes the figures for more than one prisoner were too similar to distinguish between them using this method alone. In one case, one that attained considerable notoriety, two non-related individuals were found to match all numbers perfectly.

"However, for many years, in France and elsewhere, it was the standard by which convicted felons were identified. The system was flawed, as I mentioned, because it is imprecise where measurements varying by a hundredth of an inch could lead to misidentification.

"Consider the days when fingerprint identification was accepted with a 7 point match where now the preferred number is 12, although I admit that is not required everywhere. Bertillon's system ultimately died out when it was proven beyond doubt that fingerprints do not change either, and they are much easier to obtain and more useful at Crime Scenes, but for a long time this system was utilized."

x

Eric takes the thread again. "One day we were together in my apartment watching movies and got bored. Nell doesn't like Police Procedurals, she prefers Romantic Comedy and, well, that's not important. Anyway, we decided to experiment with Bertillon's system and compiled a list. At first it was just the measurements he took, then it snowballed when we took it well beyond his standards.

"Anyway, I have, that is we have, the metric lengths and widths of our ears and the details of the canals, the lengths and widths of each finger and portions, eye width, lengths of the thighs and lower legs, the forearms and upper arms, bridge and forward length of the nose, the lengths of toes, widths of toenails..." he looks to Hetty. "It got a little silly."

"Silly is acceptable, Mr. Beale, so long as it leads to evidence that will clear Miss Jones."

He turns to the computer, manipulates controls, attention on what he's doing more than upon his audience. "As I said, I have all her measurements: ears, jawline, span from pinkie to thumb, lengths of her eyebrows, diameters of her irises–"

"Surprised you don't have the diameters of her nipples." Deeks earns Kensi's fist to his upper arm.

"10.09 millimeters left, 10.11 right." Attention focused on the screen, he'd paid little attention to the source and answered automatically. He doesn't see Kensi's open mouthed astonishment, neither does he see her punch Deeks' arm again for whatever he might be thinking.

"All these measurements probably make it easy shopping for birthday presents," Hanna attempts to steer the conversation away from the intimate.

"Never shopped for a birthday suit," Deeks says, apparently looking for serious bruising from his partner. She seems happy to oblige.

"Before this gets _completely_ out of hand," Hetty says to Beale, her tone conveying that her exasperation has reached dangerous levels for Deeks, "I am interested in the results of your analysis."

"It _wasn't_ her."

x

"You are certain." She's sure that he is or he wouldn't have summoned them to this presentation, but if she is going to present this to Clause and Frisone, she wants there to be no doubt whatsoever.

"I was _thorough_. I used detailed vector analysis, the best resolution these machines are capable of, took every figure I had, measured right down to the micrometer. On some things the variance is wild.

"Plus, there's this."

The Kanyicska suite image from when the lights had come on in answer to motion sensors and the black garbed woman had frozen and looked about for danger zooms in until Nell's face, bright with apprehension, fills the screen. Computer algorithms resolve the somewhat pixelated image of what they must admit is excellent camera resolution into a perfect close-up of their partner.

"I've gotten to know this face very well from sitting next to her for all these years, particularly those honey-brown eyes."

The eyes that look out at them are blue.

"That woman was made up with work worthy of a 'Face-Off' Champion, but she is _Not_ Nell."


	17. Overdone

Chapter Seventeen  
Overdone

Eric reaches over to Nell's keyboard. Her monitor had gone dark when the saver timed out but at the touch of a key the screen lights.

The image is split into two sides. On the right is the close up image of the blue eyed 'Nell' as seen on his screen. This one is overlaid with a web of green vector lines such as had been seen on the full body shots from the Suite and the Hardware Store. The left side shows rapidly changing pictures of women whose features can barely be distinguished behind the speedily shifting green webs. All stand before white measuring walls whose black lines flicker up and down. The black placards they hold move about and change so rapidly that the white lettering cannot be read.

"I've accessed the mug shots from every Police Department in California for the past three years. Since Kanyicska had headquarters in LA and Sacramento, I'm running those cities first, then I'll move to the rest of the State and then the other 49."

"Yes," Deeks says, "but if this is Nell's face...? I'm just saying–"

"The things I'm measuring are the ones that people wouldn't think to do. They'll go for the gross things on the face, not concentrate on iris width, lengths of eyebrows, distance from the end of one eye to the end of the other, length and width of the lips, distance from the top of the upper lip to the bottom of the lower–"

"The moment you have something, Mr. Beale."

"You'll hear me."

x

Hetty leads the agents across the room, but before she reaches the door it slides open and Jones and Berkshire are on the other side. "Hey," Nell greets them in far better spirits than she'd been in before she'd taken her break.

It is from Berkshire that Hetty wants to know "What have you discerned?"

"Well, having the IP address of the computer on which the false entry was made, I can file for a Warrant to seize it. I'm sure you have software that will detect its location when it's powered up."

"Indubitably."

"The moment it's on line," Nell says, "we'll have them."

"In the meantime," Hetty says, "Mr. Beale is attempting to identify the woman in those videos, the one who actually killed Kanyicska. As soon as she is identified I want to move quickly with arrest and a search of her home for, among other things, the red wig she used, presuming she did use such a wig. We will need the appropriate Warrants. Nell, would you show Miss Berkshire where to find the Templates?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll get right on that," Berkshire says.

"In the meantime," Hetty says, looking up not quite so high to the Intelligence Analyst, "Eric has uncovered–"

* _BANG*_

They turn to the loud noise across the room.

"Bingo, Bango, Bongo," Eric cries, turns to the group while rubbing his hand, "I've _Got_ Her!"

Sam, as the largest, had courteously been at the rear when the group had been conversing, therefore he's up front for the return trip, yet he's nearly knocked off his feet by the petite body that rockets past him with a " _Who Is She_?" He regains his balance and casts a bemused look to the excited Techs.

"You okay?" Callen asks, to which Deeks quips

"Like a sports coup running a tractor trailer off the road."

x

The picture, which is then shunted to the huge screen at their left, is the Booking record of a woman with long blonde hair and a face superficially similar to Nell's, but whose white on black LAPD placard proclaims to be Salli Essex. As the attention of the men and women behind him is focused on that tall image, Eric reports "Salli Essex, presently 29, on that date 27, was arrested for Check Fraud. She also has records for Credit Card Fraud, Identify Theft – yeah right – Grand Theft Auto and Disturbing the Peace. She was sentenced to two years for the Checks, released after seventeen months for good behavior, that being in April."

"Anything on her keeping up with her Parole Officer?" Kensi asks.

"That's a whole other level of hacking," he replies.

"I'm on it," Deeks says. Why hack when you can ask?

"Researching financial records for Salli Essex," Nell declares before even seated at her station. "Credit Cards, Checking and Savings."

"Initiating cell phone record search from the 21 Regional Carriers," Eric confirms before moving to the next search in a flurry of keystrokes.

"Checking email accounts registered to that name," Nell says even as she begins the next operation. The searches will continue automatically and the computers will flag and compile the information.

"Looking into Dating Sites such as 'RomancingTheOne," Eric says.

Nell gives him a wry look as though to say 'you would remember _that_ one.' "Expanding to Social Media Sites; Twitter, Facebook, et cetera," she says over the staccato clicking.

"Accessing DMV records."

"Checking Voter Registrations."

"Looking up MLS and other Real Estate data," Eric reports, the noise starting to resemble a Geiger Counter held far too close to a nuclear bomb.

"Accessing California Court records for Sacramento and LA."

"Searching IRS Returns."

The agents, together with Lori Berkshire, turn to depart, knowing this multifaceted hunt is in excellent hands and that the target will soon be in sight, but as the noise behind them halves they're stopped by Nell. "Guys?" When they turn, "Thank you for believing in me."

"Oh, Miss Jones, there was never any doubt."

"Yeah," Deeks says, "what she said."

She grins, her spirits lifted further, and returns to the trail.

x

Blye, Deeks, Callen and Berkshire descend the stairs but Sam stops and watches them reenter the bullpen, their conversation continuing.

"Mr. Hanna?"

He turns, looks down at the same angle to the boss. "I don't feel like taking these stairs again."

"Ah."

"You heard that list; they're gonna be whistling us up before my butt even gets comfortable."

"Tell me, Mr. Hanna, what is your assessment of this takeover plot?"

"Way overdone. First off Burgoyne, who unless he's hiding more talent than he showed G and I, I don't see sitting in that chair for very long."

"Nor do I."

"He had to spend a lot of time and effort getting Kanyicska's people to back him before he could make his move. Once he had their support, he didn't do the obvious and whip out a .45 and give Kanyicska two behind the ear. He built this elaborate plot, got resources and people he didn't need to do all this to frame an NCIS Intelligence Analyst, not even a Field Agent. Look at it, the drugs duplicating her pills took major resources."

"Indeed. That is enough to have me want to reevaluate the abilities and resources of a so-called Arms Dealer."

"Plus, Kanyicska wasn't stupid, yet all of this went on supposedly without tipping him off. The more people you have keeping a plot together, the harder it is. Yet in the end the guy fell."

"But as you said earlier, why the elaborate plot where a simple .45 would suffice?"

"It's not like Burgoyne had to do it behind anyone else's back but Kanyicska's. Kanyicska was top dog, Burgoyne his lieutenant. There's no network like the Mafia where he needed the approval of the five Families. No one else cared who held the biggest bone so long as they got their stuff on time at the agreed upon price."

"Indeed, there is no network - that we know of. And that has given me considerable pause."

"You know what I think?"

"Quite probably."

This brings an unintended smile. "I think there are people out there who wanted to deal with Kanyicska who didn't want to deal with Burgoyne, who would be less pissed if someone outside the organization hit him than if it was a palace revolt."

"If this is so, we must find out who wields such clout. It relegates the choice of assassin to the somewhat academic. Burgoyne recruited Miss Jones, so to have recruited a spy who brought down the operation in DC must have hurt his position."

x

x

"You look troubled, Mr. Hanna."

"I am. Revenge as a motive, I can see that, but what is it you would tell one of us if we went out on an Investigation with that?"

"I seem to recall some very similar situations. And I have told you that such personal issues cloud your judgment, make you lose sight of the mission and would negatively affect the outcome."

"Right. If Nell embarrassed Burgoyne, and I hope she did, by being a spy he recruited, if it happened to any of us you would tell us to suck it up and learn from the experience."

"Maybe not in those words, but the essence remains."

"Yet he devoted so many things to take her down, a complex web that should have gotten _him_ two behind the ear from Kanyicska before he had a chance to pull it off. Yet even if he did succeed in convincing people she's guilty, if Phallas and now Essex weren't losing hands for him, what's the worst case scenario?"

"The worst case, aside from the emotional impact upon us, is that NCIS would lose a very talented and valuable resource. You will remember how many Intelligence Analysts I tested before finding Miss Jones."

"Do I. I barely had time to learn their names before they were out the front door. In fact, I didn't think Nell would survive her first two weeks."

"Indeed. We were most fortunate. But if, worst case, Miss Jones were to go to prison, having given in to her desire for revenge, NCIS is not without other Intelligence Analysts. We'd have a bit of a hiccough for the time it would take to bring him or her up to speed, but we would suffer more on a personal level than we would Operationally."

"What if there's something on the horizon, something that needs us to not have a top flight Analyst in place?"

"That is indeed something to examine. And to prepare for as well as we may. And in the coming days I am going to have us address that particular issue."

x

"Even so, it doesn't answer the big question," Sam continues. "I mean NCIS is great, but it's small. The only one in the Military smaller than us is CGIS. If I were looking to hurt some Agency by taking out one of its people, I'd hit a Director or at least a Deputy, probably of Homeland."

"I'm not certain Tom Morrow would appreciate your targeting him, though the point is valid. He was NCIS Director for several years and if you want to hit NCIS, though I can't imagine why," gets her a smile, "a Director-level target in DC or even a Deputy Director is a far better choice over a behind-the-scenes Researcher in a small office. After all, it is Fresno that houses the California Field Office, we are a useful yet quasi-independent adjunct."

"I keep having the feeling that, no matter how this plays out, something is going to come up in the future that'll bite us on the ass."

"Well in that case, we are going to have to prepare to give the first bite. And perhaps your new target, having a deeper involvement in the scheme than Mr. Phallas, will be able to provide the answers we seek."

Eric steps out of Operations but halts. "Oh, I didn't know you were still here."

Sam turns and his piercing whistle is the three tone Naval piping certain to grab the attentions of Naval Investigators if only for the novelty.

xx

"Salli Essex is," Eric says before reaching his chair, waving his arm at her image and no one is surprised at the placement of his digits, but it was fast and doesn't encroach upon his words, "as I've been saying, a 'Face-Off' contestant's doppelganger for Nell–"

"If you were blind," is Nell's opinion. No one counters it, but the face that looks out from an LAPD Booking photo, though of a long haired blonde from nearly two years ago, indicates there was a sufficient canvas for the make-up artist to construct the duplicate.

"Anyway," Eric continues, not wanting to argue with his stressed friend but to recover his train, "she's employed by 'Facella & Roussillon Booksellers', which you already know about."

"Oh, yes." It's one of the Front businesses owned by Kanyicska.

"She lives close to Kanyicska's, rather Burgoyne's estate, 4.21 miles."

"Keep your friends close," Callen says, "your enemies closer but your pawns closest of all."

"Surprised we don't have to pull her from the estate itself," Sam says.

"Actually, the place she has now, whatever it's like, is a come-down from her previous address."

"You mean?" He doesn't need the answer.

"Post Office records show a Change of Address was filed on July 3rd. She used to live at the Mansion."

"Interesting. I'd think he'd want her close." However, Sam's relieved not to have to storm that particular castle. "Acres of open land within a twelve foot stone wall, and if the land's not booby-trapped - we know he has rifle emplacements on the road up to the front gate - it's cause he doesn't know where to go for superior weapons."

"You know," Callen quips, "you're sarcastic when you're pissed."

"One of my best features."

"Having seen your Driver's License, I agree."

"I went to the beauty parlor the day I had to get my photo," Kensi says.

"So did I," Nell says and glances to Hetty.

"It would not have helped."

x

The face of Salli Essex, looking out from above the numbered placard, is still close enough. The announced eye color wouldn't have saved her from eventual identification, Eric's report from the PD summary says she's as young as Nell but the height is two inches too tall for Nell's five five.

"All right," Callen says, turning to Hetty, "we're going to need warrants for her records."

"The usual methods apply," Hetty cautions, "and we must be as scrupulous in their completeness as LAPD will be in their oversight."

He leaves the double entendré alone. To the agents he says "Two teams. We'll stake out her place. If she's not in we'll be ready for her.

Nell steps forward. "Can I come?"

" _No, you can't_ ," comes out of Eric's mouth rather than Callen's, pulling all eyes to him. "That is, I'm not sure if it's, I don't think it's, well, safe, I mean who knows what you're getting into confronting your doppelganger? She may–"

"Come," Callen doesn't display his annoyance at the man. He'd been determined to keep her out of this because the possibility that her confronting Essex may taint the capture but "Seeing you face-to-face may shake something out of Essex."

"I'll get my weapon," she says as she walks to the door, her eyes cast back making it clear who she's speaking to.


	18. I'll Kick Your Butt

Chapter Eighteen  
I'll Kick Your Butt

In the DC Headquarters most of the MCR teams use the large, third floor Operations Section, Squad Room for dozens of Agents, but there are some groups that utilize private offices on the third and fourth floors. Robert DiMarco, the late, unlamented SSA of one such team, had preferred the quiet and privacy of such a room on four where he and his three teammates Kevin Lamb, Janet Levy and Lisa DuBois could work.

At least that was his announced reasoning. It had turned out that privacy is very helpful when planning Treason, Betrayal and Murder.

Now Lamb leads the team of three. His desk is DiMarco's, immediately to the right of anyone coming into the square office, positioned so he faces the door. Before that desk is his former position on the left. To his right, facing the door, Janet Levy's desk is on the left and Lisa DuBois' on the right. Filing cabinets between the desks on the left, right and rear walls, together with Janet's potted plants and Lisa's wide-eyed Margaret Keane portraits complete the furnishings.

At 1641 Lisa is the only one in the office. Kevin's desk perpendicular before hers is vacant for the moment, Janet's to her right too long vacant and the fourth diagonally across to her right a reminder of the changes over the past year and the pain that came from them. Both desks to her right stand in mute testament to pain and grief.

When Bob had betrayed and killed so many agents, she'd nearly resigned, feeling she could not trust anyone who wore the NCIS badge, not if her own Team Leader had done something so horrific for personal advancement, for a chance to come out on top in some perverted 'New World Order' created by a madman. It was Jan and Siobhan who'd gotten her through that crisis, but seemingly no sooner had life stabilized for the three survivors when Jan had suffered a worse personal tragedy.

That assault that had set her in the hospital for weeks and then to her parents' apartment to recuperate had left the question of either her eventual return to NCIS or her Resignation. As the weeks grew longer, the question became more uncertain and more grim.

But she's spared from these thoughts by the ringing phone, not that she wants distraction or worse. Alone in the office, Shift Change long past, she has no one she can pass the call on to. She'd have left already on this dull Friday were they still a team of three, but with two there's always too much work, so Change of Shift has become a nebulous event that often excludes them.

"NCIS, Special Agent DuBois. _Jan_? Oh my God, you must be psychic, I was just thinking about you."

xx

SSA Kevin Lamb steps off the elevator, turns left and heads down the corridors to his team's office. It's been a long day, 0700 for him and Lisa and he turns right and grabs the knob, for as soon as he gets in he's going to say

"Pack it up," he says past the opening door, "we'll pick up on Monday."

Lisa is on the phone and she covers the mouthpiece for a moment. "It's Jan."

He crosses the room with his hand extended and takes the phone from her. "I will never get used to you as a blonde," he declares quietly to her answering grin. She'd walked out yesterday with black hair, came in this morning with the change. He brings the unit up to his ear. "Listen, when are you going to stop lounging on the couch and come back to work? Lisa is going out of her mind; she has no one to catch her up on the latest gossip."

/I can tell you a ton about the Gaga./

"Never heard of him. But we're wearing our fingers to the bone covering for your lazy ones. We even had to go to Gibbs and borrow Palmer for a week."

/Awwww, you poor man. Two beautiful, sexy women in that office, you must have had a horrible time. And now you want a third? Are you planning to start your own stable?/

The levity drops from his tone. "How are you?"

/I'm day by day./ Her own good spirits have also collapsed and he thinks she's given up the effort. /I see Dr. Gyves twice a week./ Milton Gyves is NCIS' Psychiatrist, and two visits per week is definitely Fast Track. /He says likely, so I have to decide on a course./

He knows that course is Return or Resign, but before he can sway her decision his cell phone rings. "Got to answer this. I'll give you back to Impatient, who's sitting here with her hand out. Get better."

/Looking forward./

x

"Here, blondie."

Lisa, who had not waited with her hand extended, receives the phone with a crinkled nose look to her boss. "Jan, look, you want to get together for lunch this weekend? We can talk."

/I've got nothing planned./

She looks up but Kevin has his thumb cocked to the left. "Sorry, I have to go. Looks like we're on."

/Pulling a double?/

"I should be so lucky if it's only that. I hate Fridays. I'll call you back."

/Keep your eyes open,/ is their standard advice when hitting the field.

When she hangs up, Kevin says "The boss wants to see us." He turns to the door, already starting before she can come out from behind the desk.

"Shepherd? Not Mulvaney?" He usually dispatches teams. "What's up?" she asks as she leads him through.

"We are."

"Smart ass."

xx

They don't discuss their teammate's situation as they walk the distance to the Director's Offices, nor do they have to stop at Cynthia Sumner's desk. The black woman does a double take at Lisa, mouths 'love the hair' but waves them directly through to the large, wood paneled office.

"Come in," Shepherd says, her manner telegraphing impatience. She does that same double take but is more focused.

"What's up?" Kevin asks, confident he won't get a factitious answer like he'd given Lisa. Further, the grim expression on the woman's face tells him two things (he'd already assessed the seriousness when she'd phoned him directly an hour after they'd supposedly left): it's bad news and he's not going to be watching the Nationals this evening.

"There's a problem at Naval Station Norfolk," she says, her expression and tone showing that she is holding on to patience that threatens to slip through her fingers. "In their R&D section, a specialized unit within but operating separately from the Station. Three Scientists and their families have disappeared, and in their wisdom _someone_ chose not to report this for a week."

"Wonderful."

"We'd been there to that special Bunker before, a year ago. That was where 'Operation Dragonfire' had been developed."

"That was a Gibbs case, wasn't it?" Lisa asks.

"Yes. That's where they built the Photon Density Convertor Mark 9 that we were going to use against the USS Millennium."

Lamb scowls. "The Ultimate Weapon to take out the Ultimate Weapon."

"The three scientists were the survivors of the nine principals who conceived and built the thing. Of the originals, Capt. Al Morris was shot with an arrow identified as belonging to Legolis from 'Lord of the Rings' and Nikki Morris' head was nearly severed with something called Dragonclaw, used by another fictional character, Eldrad. Lieutenant Carla Stratton was jogging outside Norfolk and was stabbed with a sword by hit man Ronald Adolphus, also known as the Iceman, riding a motorcycle.

"The sword was a replica of the one used by Red Sonja. Professor Joseph Parsuer was impaled by 3 blades through his throat, that weapon I can't recall what book it came from. Miranda Higgins was killed with a batarang through her throat, then finished off with a Klingon d'k tahg. Though Adolphus killed them, Jack Carson was arrested as the one who contracted the murders and supplied the Fantasy weapons.

"Though two of the missing scientists had been at Norfolk for years, Dragonclaw is the only project all three who disappeared, Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron, had been involved in together. Since then Cintron has worked on separate projects while Bachman and Esposito were paired on their recently completed project. We can't be sure that the PDC project is involved, but it's too great a risk to ignore."

Lisa checks her watch, it's past 1700. "Norfolk is a good four hours away, Friday evening it'll be better than five."

"Get an early start in the morning."

"What exactly do we know?" Kevin asks.

"Mark Shaw, the senior man there, said that he and the others had taken the week off, no projects. They were supposed to check in today, but none of them can be reached."

"So whatever happened to them," is his sour conclusion, "whoever took them has a week's head start."

Shepherd passes three Agency file folders across her desk. "Here's what information Norfolk faxed."

The folders are annoyingly thin.

"Anything you have that's not in these?" Lamb asks.

"I'm sure there's a lot, but talk to Gibbs and his team. If it is the PDC, Operation Dragonfire, I can't stress the danger enough. When they called it the Ultimate Weapon they were being subtle."

xxx

The stake-out of Salli Essex's home is entering its second hour. When the teams had arrived a few minutes after 1300 they'd quickly learned that Essex wasn't in her two story home so they'd returned to their cars, Nell with G and Sam parked eleven car lengths back from the building on the left side of the one-way street, Kensi and Deeks parked directly in front.

A few minutes ago, after the clock had marked the second hour, Lori Berkshire had called to confirm that the necessary Warrants for Arrest as well as Search and Seizure of a basket-load of evidence have been secured.

It is standard procedure for a Warrant to contain at least one very small item, otherwise the agents could not search anywhere where the smallest item on the Affidavit could not fit. For instance, if the smallest thing listed was a television, they could not open drawers or cupboards, as a television cannot fit in a drawer. Therefore, OSP warrant affidavit templates always include a thumb drive, but this time they do expect to find some such material, as Burgoyne had used one to implicate Nell and Clause had consolidated everything the detectives had on their case onto such a device.

But for the time, they must be patient and wait. Eventually, they hope, Essex will return home if she isn't safely ensconced in Burgoyne's mansion.

It would be the smart thing for the new Gun Lord to do, so they hope he's only as smart as they credit him to be.

x

"Nell, I have to ask you something," Callen says from the driver's seat to the woman behind him, feeling the need to break from his ongoing discussion with Sam to bring the woman out of her silence. Besides, he was losing.

"Why so diffident? Not like you, Callen."

He can tell she's forcing the smile into her tone and knows it's ready to collapse. "The DNA in the gloves." Phallas had smeared the two pairs of inverted gloves she's alleged to have worn up and down her bed to coat them with her DNA (Essex presumably wore inner gloves) before hiding them in her apartment. "Is there any chance any … well, any other DNA would be found in the gloves?"

He'd asked with as much assurance as he could, not much at all.

"Callen, what are you implying?"

He glances back, noting her tone. "Well, there's this DNA, on your bed, but is...? What I'm trying to say is I think we could disprove you wore them at the scene if someone else's traces are found."

"Callen, are you trying to imply someone _else's_ DNA would be in my bed?"

"Well, not to put too much, I mean, you are taking Ortho. That is–"

"Are you sitting there saying that because I'm on the pill anyone would find male DNA on my bed?" This pulls him to turn back. He hadn't known until this moment how mad she was. He has to head this misunderstanding off right now.

"Well, if they found any, it would mean the gloves wouldn't have picked up the traces from the one who killed Kanyicska, that it would be tainted."

"I don't think I've been so insulted in my life. What kind of woman do you think I am, that I'd have a man in my bed? You think I hostess Fleet Week parties? You're saying I'm NCIS' _whore_ , a different man every night? Is that what you're saying I am?"

"Wait - no - I'm just saying if you were to–"

" _If I were to_! What do you think I do when I leave work – and how is it any of your business?"

"Wait, you're not getting me."

"I don't want you!"

"Nell, I'm not trying to be insulting, but–"

"Well, you do it so _well_. What kind of slut do you think I am?"

"I never thought you were a slut."

"Well, you certainly act it. You sound like you think I'll pencil you in for Tuesday."

"Nell, I swear to you–"

x

But she can't keep it up and a laugh bursts out. "Callen, thank you," she says when she can draw a breath, leaving him quite relieved. "I really needed that. But seriously, no, much as I'd love to disprove the gloves came from me, I haven't had any companionship in weeks. Well, there was one time but that was weeks ago and I've laundered whites a couple of times since. And I'm thinking now that I'll have the whole apartment fumigated."

"I wasn't trying to imply anything."

"No, I was just playing with you. Though that's the _only_ playing I'm ever going to do with you–"

/Heads up, people,/ Marty Deeks' voice comes, only slightly distorted, through their ear wigs and pulls their attentions forward, to Callen's great relief.

x

From the far right corner, carrying two plastic bags by their straps, Salli Essex approaches, walking toward her home opposite the one-way traffic. She has short blonde hair unlike in her Booking photo but indubitably better for wig wearing, and the blue shorts and halter combo probably got her a lot of attention today. Callen, as he starts the car, thinks of the Hardware Store video and wonders how well she knows Larry Phallas.

Deeks and Blye, parked directly in front of the woman's home, will make the first contact. If they can apprehend her, perfect. If not, and she runs this way, they'll head her off. If she flees back the way she came he's ready to leave the space and pursue.

The blonde woman approaches her home, oblivious to the trap, and as she takes her first step onto the final path the car doors fly open.

"Salli Essex," Kensi says as Deeks hurries around the front of the car. When Essex turns the pair already have their shields on display. "We'd like to ask you a few ques–"

Essex flings the right bag at Kensi, the left at Deeks and runs back the way she'd come as they avoid the missiles. Ignoring the groceries that spread outward from the destroyed plastic, the pair pursue.

x

She's fast, but her disadvantage peaks as Callen pulls his car out and the agents close the distance in seconds, but Essex is running flat out and there's no point in the unbroken line of parked cars where they can cut her off. Getting out is pointless as they already have two running pursuers in the 85 degree heat.

Essex maintains her distance from Kensi and Marty but as she runs midway along the next street she labors under the heat. Gulping hot air into lungs is no way to maintain any pace. She stumbles, rights herself and Blye and Deeks, seeing her struggle, hang back thirty feet, allow her to strain in her headlong flight.

She ducks and weaves past other pedestrians, colliding with several whom the agents avoid with ease as Callen paces her in his car. By the third block she's straining, staggering, her footfalls hard on the cement and even the agents in the car hear her laboring breathing.

She slows further, Deeks and Blye doing little more than a moderate jog, no more than they would in a long workout and Callen slows his car further.

Essex's speed drops further as her breathing grows louder and more labored. In crossing the fifth street she's coming down hard enough to shake her body with each loud step and as she nears the corner she's barely making any time at all. A hundred feet along the next street she veers left, more a stagger, and collapses upon the hood of a car, gasping great gulps of hot air, limp against the vehicle as the agents walk the remaining distance. Callen double parks beside the car. Essex's wheezing breath can be heard far beyond their range, her chest heaving like a bellows as she lays against the hot metal.

x

Nell gets out from the back seat alone, no need for five to surround their prey and she steps around the front of the car into Essex's sight. "Girl, you have _got_ to work out."

Essex looks up to her. "Oh, _Sh_ * _t_ ," she pants and pushes off, sees Blye and Deeks behind her and tries to get around Nell to continue her flight. As she passes close Nell pivots, her foot comes up and connects hard with the tightest part of the woman's blue shorts. Essex, driven faster than her feet can carry her, careens forward and down to slide along the sidewalk.

"Interesting move," Sam says as he gets out of the car.

"I've always wanted to do that," Deeks quips.

x

The five surround the panting woman who, when she looks up, has bloody scrapes along her left cheek. She tries to push herself up, perhaps to resume her headlong flight.

"Don't bother," Callen advises. Sam has his handcuffs out.

"May I?" Nell asks.

Sam hands her the binders. "Be my guest."

Nell pulls the panting woman's left arm back and up and ratchets the first cuff about her wrist. "You have the right to remain silent, but if you try it I'll _really_ kick your butt."

The agents exchange bemused glances. Of course the Warning must be given in full and correctly, but there's something satisfying about the modification.

xx

When their prisoner is put into the rear seat of Callen's car with Sam, Nell riding in the shotgun position, Marty and Kensi walk back to the woman's building.

Callen hadn't thought to keep Essex and Jones as far apart in the car as he could; he trusts Nell's professionalism and Essex is cuffed. But as soon as he starts down the street Nell looks back to the blonde woman.

"What're you looking at?" Essex demands with sharp belligerence, which only causes Nell to smile. The scrapes on her cheek have stopped bleeding but haven't been cleaned.

"Well?" Nell continues to stare. "Say something, bitch. I'll beat that grin off your ugly face." Nell's smile changes slightly, very much an expression of triumph.

Essex's demands continue, rising in passion, but Nell continues to stare, to smile. Nothing the woman can dredge up, and her vocabulary is one Callen considers rather impressive in its coarseness, can change Nell's expression. The silent, triumphant, mocking stare drives the woman to mounting rage. Nothing Essex can say prompts a reply, nor can she do anything to stop the torment.

When a look at Sam makes her realize he's doing the same thing, staring without expression and without break, Callen wishes for ear plugs. In this traffic, it'll take over half an hour to reach Marina Del Rey.

#\\#\\#\\#\\#

Author's Note: For information about the PDC/9 and the murders of the Scientists involved in its creation, see my Mystery 'The Fantasy Affair'.


	19. First Rule

Chapter Nineteen  
First Rule

The front door to Salli Essex's two story house gave way within twenty seconds to Kensi's skillful lock picking. There had been no groceries spread upon the street when Deeks and his partner had walked back; if there had been they might have brought whatever was there inside but they would each have been surprised had anything remained for them to collect.

The door opens to a living room, tastefully decorated, and through a large arch is the kitchen. From where they stand there are three rooms visible, all large and well appointed.

"Looks like the Bookstore pays well," Deeks says.

"Wonder how much murder does."

"Enough to afford this?"

"Probably not. One of Kanyicska's places is a Real Estate office."

"If she's smart, what's she doing here instead of at the mansion?"

"Who says she's smart?" she asks.

"True. I wonder if Burgoyne is. Remember, keep your friends close, your enemies closer and your pawns closest of all."

"Didn't help Phallas."

"From what I've seen, nothing can help Phallas. Definitely a case of erec–"

"Don't say it."

x

They start in the bedroom to the right, the other direction opening into what passes for a den. Kensi is pleased that, when she steps into the room with its unmade bed and distinct air of a very lived-in room, she sees upon the large mirrored bureau a white head modeling a short, very red wig. "In the immortal words of Eric Beale: 'Bingo, Bango, Bongo'."

Marty, after photographing it in situ, very carefully lifts the headpiece and examines the inside. "Kens, I do believe we have blonde."

Now they must do the same thing that LAPD did with the black wig: prove that these hairs came from Essex.

xxx

When the agents reached the Boat Shed, Sam had pulled Essex from the car, brought her along the long dock and ignored all of her questions, demands and finally pleas. She remained cuffed, unable to help herself against the mountainous man who guided her with silent determination as though uncaring if she survived the trip or not.

Callen and Nell had waited until the pair was out of sight on the dock before getting out of the car and following, their intent being to emphasize Essex's solitude. She's alone with Sam, far from the expected Police Station, not knowing how long she'll be captive of the taciturn black man.

When she's secured in the Interview room Sam locks the door and leaves her alone. Callen and Nell, then Sam, monitor their prisoner on the large screen, the image simulcast to their headquarters miles away. The image had been briefly split with the close-up of Henrietta Lange, who had directed them to hold questioning until Detectives James Clause and Barry Frisone arrived.

Copies of the Warrants obtained by Lori Berkshire have been faxed to this outer office.

The use of the Boat Shed has always been to impress upon subjects the oddity of their situation. They are not being interviewed in the familiar confines of a Police Station but in a place that contains no symbols, no documents, nothing to give the impression that they will go from this place to anywhere other than the raging ocean under the building, never to be seen again.

Three chairs have been set up on one side of the long table, but in adding the two Sam hadn't looked at Essex or even acknowledged her existence, an implied message that she won't have one for very much longer.

That rendezvous with LAPD took an additional thirty six minutes, all of which Essex has spent in seclusion and increasing tension. She probably assumed she was under observation for she had kept up an invective filled diatribe punctuated with pleas for water and release. The lack of water, with the air filled with the scent of salty sea right outside the window, is a calculated move.

x

When Callen, Clause and Frisone enter the inner room while Hanna and Jones watch on the monitor and Lange and Beale do so in Ops, Callen sets a plastic bottle of water upon the table and then unlocks the cuffs.

Essex snatches the bottle, twists sharply as though she were breaking one or more of their necks and gulps down half the bottle. When she sets it down, Callen picks it up by spots Essex hadn't touched. "Thank you," he says and carries it to the door.

"Oh, sh*t." Essex has realized the purpose of the bottle. Rather than a kindness, it's another nail pounded into her coffin, this time by her own hand.

Sam is on the other side of the door and they exchange bottles, the used one is dropped into an Evidence bag and Callen brings the fresh one in and sets it upon the table. "Feel free to all you want; we have plenty."

"Son of a Bitch."

"Now, now, that's not very ladylike."

Her glare is a fully charged phaser bank firing at full power.

x

Callen takes his place in the center chair, Frisone on his left. Clause sets down a large envelope before the senior agent.

"Thank you for not asking why you're here. Special Agent Jones is outside and she'd really be pissed if you decided to play dumb."

"I've never played dumb in my life."

"Noted. I won't ask you why you ran, that's as obvious as your second attempt when you recognized Special Agent Jones," he says, driving home her status.

"I ran because I thought I was being attacked."

"By a man and woman with shields. I thought you said you've never played dumb in your life." While she tries to think of a way around this, Callen draws from the envelope an IRS form he can tell from the woman's eyes that she recognizes. "You work for Facella and Roussillon, a Stationary and Book Store in Larchmont."

"So?"

"So there's no Facella and there's no Roussillon. The place is owned by Lackenbauer Industries, which is a hundred percent owned by Grekor Kanyicska."

"Who?"

"He's the man you murdered."

"Did not."

x

He removes from the folder a stack of pages. "We got a warrant for your bank records," he says, more to the detectives on either side of him. "The bookstore doesn't pay very much, automatic weekly deposits of $425 to your account. Now, since early July, you live in a very nice place that records show is long ago paid off. But on the 20th of last month and the 3rd of this month you deposited two payments of $10,000 each."

"I won a bet."

"On whether you could impersonate a Federal Agent. Well, you lost." He pulls out another photo, this one from the Hardware Store. "On July 17th you were photographed buying supplies which were later traced to his murder."

"That's not me," she says, fingering her short blonde hair.

"Oh, it is."

/Callen, you're going to want to see this,/ Eric's voice says into his right ear. He wishes it hadn't, he'd been building to something and must recover his train.

"Yes, Eric," he says, hand to his ear holding the tiny button.

/I'm sending a series of pictures to your phone. The woman does love her selfies, they average two a day on Facebook, but pay particular attention to the final one in the set, it's from the day prior to the Hardware store./

"Right."

x

Pulling out his cell phone to check the pictures in an angle where Clause and Frisone can see but Essex cannot would, under any other circumstances, be the height of rudeness. In this case he doesn't mind.

After paging through the set, he sets the phone down. "You got a haircut recently."

"No crime."

"No, though I do think you look better with it long."

"Thank you."

"Trouble is, all that hair's a problem with a pixie style wig, it'd sit on your head like a Rastafarian's hat. But what you've got now, no problem."

"Keep telling you, I'm not the one you want. You've got this all wrong," her affable manner sloughs off, "and I'm going to sue your asses off for false arrest and maybe include wrongful prosecution. Definitely assault," she says, rubbing her scabbed cheek.

"You'll have time for that one."

The phone vibrates the table and the screen before him lights with 'Kensi' and an image of the beautiful woman. He picks it up, again not bothering with the usual 'excuse me'. "Yes?"

He listens for a minute, says "Thanks, bring it and everything else you find in."

x

When he breaks the connection, he's a happy man. "That was the agents who are searching your house. They found the wig you wore in that photo."

She shakes her head. "I keep telling you, that's not me."

"Oh, it's you all right."

Staring, this time started by her, and for a very long minute they're deadlocked.

Callen doesn't mind. Many times he's made progress through silence, because people being questioned for crimes they're known to have committed share one thing in common: they cannot abide silence. Let it go on for too long and they're compelled to fill it.

"Don't know why you keep saying that's me, it doesn't look a bit like me. I don't know what you're talking about."

"See, there's that playing dumb again." He pulls out another picture, this one the startled pause in Kanyicska's suite when the lights had come on automatically. "This is you too. We have plenty of proof. Make-up is good, world class excellent, but you made a major error." She'd actually been one of several conspirators who made two blunders, eye color being the first, but he taps the photo, indicating the head of the woman. "In this one you wore a red wig because when Agent Jones was in Washington with Kanyicska she had red hair, but as you saw when you recognized her earlier, she's gone back to auburn. Neither you nor Burgoyne's people accounted for that."

Her eyes telegraph that moment when realization hits. "F*ckin' _ginger_ _Bitch_!"

"Wanna tell us now?"

"No."

x

"To get over the wall of the estate," Friscone says, "and then up to the third floor you had to climb ropes. The ropes had skin cells on them."

"Impossible."

"You wore gloves when you climbed the walls, true, but you put the left one on with your bare right hand. That evidence transferred to the ropes."

Clause tells her, "We didn't get a hit through CODIS because you're not on record. None of your crimes prior to this required DNA to be collected. But remember that water bottle? The swab's already on its way to the Lab, and no one has any doubt they'll match."

"You couldn't get a match from that little DNA."

"You should keep up."

They watch her read their eyes, and in them her doom. " _Shit_."

x

"Inside those gloves you used to scale the walls we also found traces of latex from the inner gloves you wore. That's something that wouldn't be done unless you were trying to keep your DNA from the inner sides of the gloves. Jones' DNA was planted there by Phallas."

Callen leans forward, deciding that even if she beats a murder rap he'll gladly play poker with her any day he can. She may talk a good story, but her eyes scream 'arrest me'. "Tell us about it."

"Tell you what?"

"How they recruited you, why you did it, the whole thing."

"I don't have to say a word. You and I both know I'll never see the inside of a jail cell."

"That's the first thing you've said that I agree with."

x

The change confuses her. He can see it on her 'play poker with me' face.

"What do you mean?"

"You used to live at Kanyicska's mansion, now you don't. You were moved out so no change in your manner would tip him off."

"Speculation," she says in sing-song tones.

"Right now all our evidence points to you. Burgoyne has kept his hands nice and clean. If he learned anything from Kanyicska, it was to do that. Meantime, you're the one in the crosshairs. I think it's time for you to start doing the smart thing and to look out for yourself." Silence. Stare. "You're facing Conspiracy, Murder, Impersonating a Federal Agent, Flight to Avoid Arrest, Fraud and other charges, though I can guarantee you right now that, if you count on Burgoyne for help, you'll never see the inside of a cell." He lets her puzzle through that.

"Huh?" The words, as words, should have been good news to her, yet it hadn't sounded that way.

"Not after what happened to Phallas."

"What?"

"Larry Phallas gave you up, right after he was shot at."

"Shot at?"

He almost feels sorry for her. The walls of her castle are crumbling and she's still inside. "Right outside these walls. Rifle shots just missed him. We could show you where the shots landed. We didn't find the sniper." All strictly true.

"Phallas is a tool. I'm not."

'Someone bring me my cards. Please.' "Yet you're not living at the Mansion anymore."

"That's just a cover."

"You been back there since the night you killed Kanyicska?" He doesn't need her words; her eyes answer him. 'Sam, the cards. And just bring the blue chips, I won't need the others.' "Burgoyne got what he wants, he doesn't need you anymore."

"Not true."

"Let's say I'm right and you're out. You're definitely out of the Mansion. He may have promised you the moon, but what are you going to do when you find out you've been stiffed? Complain to the Police?" He lets that sink in. "If he wanted you in, you'd be in. Someone took pot shots at Phallas. How long do you think it'll be before it's your turn?"

Silence is still her answer, but her eyes say the walls are crumbling.

"You're a loose end, and everything in this case points to you, not to Burgoyne. He just has to make sure you don't talk. You know the First Rule of Assassination?"

"No. _What_?"

"Kill the Assassin."

x

x

x

Callen thinks he's reading the misgivings she may have had since this scheme had ended and she's still at the 'safe' house which now probably doesn't seem so safe. Disregarded or abandoned, all he need do is add to those doubts.

"Suppose I believe you. Suppose you do convince me to cooperate with you. What's in it for me?"

"Same as we're giving Phallas. Protection."

"Not enough.

Surprise. She's working on a rally, but he can play it. "What do you want?"

"I'll let you know."

He can wait. "Why the elaborate plot? If this was a simple takeover, why involve Jones?"

"I don't know."

Time for the stares and these men can and do make them last. As the seconds stretch on into and past the first minute, then drop to the 6 and swing up again they watch the answer beat with greater and greater force until, after the third oppressive minute, she finally admits that "Burgoyne couldn't hit Kanyicska."

"Why not?" Callen asks, containing his 'gotcha' smile, for to display such a thing will be to undo their victory.

"Kanyicska had a major deal in the works, customer doesn't like Burgoyne, doesn't trust him."

Callen exchanges 'I wonder why' glances with the detectives on either side of him. If Burgoyne was generally not trusted - he certainly does not - it may have told the number two that he wasn't going to advance under the status quo. This may even have been the first stirrings of revolution so many months ago, and this only put into play when Nell had entered the picture.

But as Essex had sung, so off key, 'speculation', and it changes nothing when he needs to focus.

"So?"

"He had to wait for the deal to go through. Missiles, rockets, mortars, thousands of rounds of armor piercing shells, smart guns with thousands of smart bullets," this one sends a deep chill through Callen, "heavy weaponry, enough to outfit an army. It was the biggest deal Kanyicska had ever made, more stuff to move in a week than he'd moved in the past year."

He has to work hard to keep his feelings from his face. "The deal complete?"

"Yep. I understand the stuff started shipping before Phallas and I were put into play."

Callen feels the chill sink into his bones. "Who's the customer?"

Essex sits back and smiles. "We got a deal?"

"What deal?"

"I want all Charges dropped. I want your famous Witness Protection. I want out of here, far, far out. I want enough money to keep me in the lifestyle I intend to grow accustomed to _and_ I want immunity from prosecution."

"Big shopping list."

"Take it or leave it."

x

/Accept,/ says Hetty's voice in his ear.

"All right. If your Intel pays off, it's a deal." Burgoyne's a bigger catch if they can get her testimony on the murder but what they really need to know is "Who's the client?"

"Never heard of him before, but he has plenty of cash and a yearning to outfit an army. Name's Jackson McGilli-something."

/ _Bugger_./

x

"All right, like I said, if your story checks out you've got what you want."

"I want it in writing."

/Make it happen, Miss Jones./

x

.

x

.

x

/Miss Jones?/

/Yes, ma'am./

She sounds like she's being disemboweled with a rusted spoon and he sympathizes.

"Being done. Now, tell me how you framed Special Agent Jones."

"When I have the deal in my hand."

x

A minute later Sam delivers the paper and the message in his eyes is no surprise to Callen, but he shuts the door and hands Essex the paper. "Now make it worth it."

"Fine." She sets the paper down, covers it with her hand as though either to protect it or to mark it as her treasure. The men don't care what she thinks or feels. "They came to me, Kanyicska's people, told me everything they wanted. They gave me twenty thousand dollars to do it."

"Twenty thousand." The price of murder does beat apartment invasion and laying traps.

"Ten to make sure a lot of people, a lot of cameras, saw me buying the stuff they needed. Before I went they had a cast made of my face. I didn't like that at all but they'd just laid a hundred Benjamins in my hand so I did it. Two days later they brought me in and put thin prosthetics on my face, made me up as your friend and I went shopping.

"They were removing Kanyicska. Burgoyne, a snake if ever there was one, was planning a palace revolt but they needed to send the trail to someone else. We thought it worked perfectly and they laid a hundred more Bennies on me." She looks with considerable ire at the red haired woman in the photo, herself in the wrong wig. Callen thinks she's thinking of the auburn haired woman who'd literally kicked her ass. "I guess they weren't as smart as they thought they were."

"No, they weren't. How did they do it?"

x

"They told me the alarms, the cameras, everything was turned off. The guards were on our side. They threw a rope over the wall for me to climb but they helped me over the wall. There was a rope to get me up to the suite and back down. One of the guards threw the rope and hook up, then shook it loose of the patio railing, but that took a couple of tries.

"But when the lights came on in his rooms my heart almost jumped out of my chest. They didn't tell me they'd left that on to catch that ginger bitch getting caught. Natural reaction, they'd called what they wanted but I almost shit a brick. But I had to go on with it.

"I went inside. He was asleep. I hopped on the bed, knelt on his arms and as he woke up I sprayed the Flex-Seal all over his face, just kept spraying it. It took him like forever to stop moving."

It took less than seven minutes total, that was the amount of time she was in the room according to the video's time stamp. A little more or less than four minutes would've been the suffocation itself.

"I climbed down the rope, then they helped me over the wall. I dropped the black wig from the wall and went over, just like they planned. Then I was to act normally, pretend nothing ever happened.

"They said I had to wait a while, but I'd be back at the mansion soon and that, having done so good a job, there would be bigger and better things than what Kanyicska was offering."

x

Listening to this story, how calmly and logically murder is spelled out, Callen again feels chilled, almost as much as when he'd heard that shopping list for war. She's not pretending nothing happened, she actually speaks as though there's no emotional attachment at all. She murdered a man, sprayed layers of quick drying rubberized sealant onto his face, rode him as he smothered, and there's absolutely nothing to it for her.

He wonders what more she'd been promised, how far into the Arms Dealer's organization she's likely to have been brought, where she'd be in it in ten years and decides he doesn't ever want to know.

xxx

In the bullpen at headquarters five agents and two detectives confer in quieted voices, as though trying to drive the taint away in any way they may. Hetty has officially turned the case, in all its permutations and perversions, to the LAPD and Blye and Deeks have left with Essex. Most especially she's informed Jennifer Shepherd of the very bad news, that the danger the world faced from a ruthless Arms Dealer has now escalated with the overarming of a most deadly enemy.

NCIS, together with all other Agencies, are for a long time on High Alert for information about the threat posed by Jackson McGillicuddy, but the urgency has now been stepped up.

But beyond that, there are immediate and local concerns.

x

"But we traced them," Eric objects, the only raised voice thus far. "We caught Phallas and Essex. We proved Burgoyne planned Kanyicska's murder and _Framed_ _Nell_! We proved Nell is _innocent_. Now we just let her go?"

"Oh, Mr. Beale, you know better than that. Miss Essex is under DoJ control for the rest of her foreseeable life, and if she does not cooperate with a prosecution against Burgoyne, the full judicial weight will fall squarely upon her shoulders. She is by no means being set free. As to Nell's situation, we were dragged into this, kicking and screaming, because of an accusation against one of our own." She turns and looks up at the taller detective. "If LAPD will now drop those Charges, they may have Miss Essex with our blessing."

"Done," Clause assures them. "We'll continue to build the case against Burgoyne and his people, and maybe this time we'll be able to take them down."

"We've provided all the records we have," she assures him. The bagged wig Kensi and Marty brought back is only the most recent.

"And you can rest assured they'll be well used."

"Then I trust everyone is satisfied," Hetty says with compelling looks at her team.

"No, I'm not satisfied," Nell declares. "I'm not satisfied at all."

"Why not?" she asks.

This halts Nell for a moment before she sees it's not a confession of ignorance, it's an invitation. "It's not just dropping the Charges. That's not enough, because the Charge, the Investigation, are still out there. I want my Record _expunged_."

"Of what?" Clause asks, the point saying what words need not. "In fact, I'll do you one better." He extends his hand. "The LAPD offers its most sincere apologies."

xxx

Blye and Deeks drive Salli Essex, who now believes she's a free woman in exchange for deals and bigger fish, to her home to pick up clothing and other things before they take her to a Safe House, not the one Phallas is ensconced in but one as distant as possible from it.

In reality, Essex and Phallas will be owned by the Justice Department for as long as they can be considered in any way useful.

No one speaks. Blye and Deeks feel they've been indirect parties, in absentia, to the proverbial 'Deal with the Devil'. True, in giving up the actual murderer of Grekor Kanyicska they lay claim to bigger fish and the possibility of dealing a crippling blow to the Arms Dealer's operation, but it still tastes rancid.

Neither of them glance at the woman in the back seat. It's not the first time the Law Enforcement Officers have laid eyes upon a truly remorseless person, won't be the last, yet the experience seems to have a way of tainting the soul by contact alone.

x

Kensi parks across the street from Essex's house and all three open their doors. "I'll do this alone," Essex announces.

"Not in the cards," Deeks counters, half out of the passenger door.

"Look, I'm cooperating, but that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over. I'll pack my stuff and you can take me wherever the hell we're going, but I do this alone."

"Fine." He's seen the place once, has no interest in a review. There's no point in pressing the issue; if she runs she runs away from a deal too sweet for his taste and will again be wanted for murder, and probably be caught even more easily the next time.

Essex crosses the street, up the walk, opens the door and slams it behind her. Kensi, seated next to him, gives her opinion of the deal they've been forced to accept. "What a load of s–"

The explosion takes out every window in the first instant, fire launching out in every direction. The next instant cracks most of the building as the noise and shock wave hit and rock the car. Deeks, further from the explosion, had grabbed Kensi and yanked her to him and down before the wave hit, acting instinctively on the first sight of flame to cover her body with his own.

They'd managed to cover their ears at the first sight of the explosion which took the entire house so when they feel safe enough to lower their hands the air is filled with car alarms, barking dogs, the tinkling of still falling glass, the clunks of masonry and wood and the roar of fire that consumes the entire building.

Deeks sits up, allowing Kensi to do the same and they stare, appalled, at the conflagration. Either she did something they had not or the house had been rigged after they'd left with the gathered evidence. It would be interesting to find out, but they suspect Essex had been declared a liability after they'd picked her up. Either way, it won't change the

"First Rule," Deeks says over the crackling flames as distant sirens rise.


	20. Epilogue

Epilogue

An hour has passed since the detectives left and the news about Essex had been called in, but it will take far longer for the agents to cleanse the effects of these days from their souls. Nell enters Ops, sees Eric seated at his station, and to her he's one of the few stable elements in her life.

Wolfram.

She's finished a long conversation with Hetty, has booked another session with Nate Getz for the morning - is that really Saturday already? - but for the moment those things have to take a back seat. There's too much more to do.

She steps up behind her partner. "Bear bear, could I talk to you?"

He looks back and up at her. "Always," and in his eyes she can read that he's surprised she feels she has to ask. "How do you feel?"

She sits down beside him so she can meet his eyes more directly. "If I figure it out, I'll let you know."

"Gonna take time." That's a painful lesson Nate Getz has given each of them several times.

She turns the chair to face him, he swivels his own. "If I tell you something, would you promise not to get mad at me?"

"I won't get mad at you. I could never be mad at you, especially now."

"Promise me?"

"Promise."

x

She draws the chair closer, reaches out to him without reaching. Their knees are an eighth of an inch apart. "I need to know that, while you're on my side, that you're not too much on my side."

"To coin a phrase: 'Huh'?"

She's very close, the conversation intimate. "Earlier, when we were going after Essex you kind of, well, intruded."

"I know. And I'm sorry. I was worried, no, that's not so. I was scared for you. I knew everyone was going to be there, but that didn't – doesn't count."

"Ah. So you're saying you did it because you weren't going to be there." She searches his eyes. Those eyes always tell her so much and she knows she's hit perfectly upon his thoughts. She gets closer, her knees alternating with his, close so their knees touch one another's chairs. They're almost touching, but not yet. "I know you want to protect me, especially after all this, and that's sweet. But you can't protect me. Not all the time. Not like you want."

He closes his legs, traps her knee between his. "I do want."

"You can't." But if he would pull away she closes her own legs, traps his knee as he's captured hers. She waits until he works through the sting of this before she hits him with the new one. "And you can't control my life either, can't jump in and speak for me. I won't have that."

"But, you know..." He tries again. "We have... well, we have a thing, you know?"

"We have a thing," she grants, squeezes his knee between hers. "It's a nice thing. I like our thing. But it doesn't give you the right–"

"I know. I'm sorry." She doesn't answer. "Will you forgive me?"

She leans closer. "Yes. If you promise not to do it again."

He comes to bare inches from her and she wonders if he's planning to kiss her. Her knee is trapped as his is but

"No." This surprises her. "I can't do that. I won't."

She stares at him, unable to believe he said it.

x

"I'm with you, always. It's not just our doing our thing. It's..." Lost for words, intimately close, he holds his right hand up between them, fingers splayed, and she reaches out and interlaces hers with his, their grip closing over. He brings his left hand up and covers hers and, sensing his intent, she interlaces her own again over his right in a larger binding. He leans closer still, her eyes come up to meet his, their lips a kissable inch apart.

"Nell Jones, I am not letting go."

*#*#*#*#*

Next Episode: Life, the Universe and Everything: Mystery upon Mystery tears at the NCIS while several teams struggle to solve 'Operation Life Source' and 'Operation Dragonfire', the Navy's most closely guarded secrets, and while an old enemy arms for war two agents face a shocking revelation.


End file.
